The Cage was presented by Natasha Junkermeier from Tallahassee Florida at this year’s Orlando International Fringe Festival. The Cage was a site specific show being held on the lawn between the Orlando Family Stage and OMA. It was an immersive experience exploring the harsh realities of immigrants and people of color being harassed by ICE agents in America today. The show is based on the accounts of 5 detainees as well as interviews with Anna Eskamani and Carlos Guerillmo Smith.
Melanie Bailey was working the ticket booth and she helped me get set up to sketch the show. Attendees are first given a briefing at the ticket booth and are given white masks before they are allowed to approach the ICE cage.
An ICE agent brought the audience closer to the cage. They were tentative and her shouted at them to think and find an open shot to stand. Inside the cage was a lone woman seated in a folding chair with her hands tied behind her back. She wore a COVID mask. She looked uncomfortable. She was a volunteer who had answered the following call to duty… “Do you want to make a difference in the community? Are you ready to stand up to the horrors of current U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcement and removal operations in America?”
I would not consider this a play. At the Orlando Teaser Show The Cage was presented for 3 violent and harrowing minutes and when it was over the audience was absolutely silent. They did not know how to respond. Usually there is laughter and clapping but this was the first time I have ever seen complete silence from an audience at a teaser show.
The green lawn where The Cage was staged was bright and sunny. An energetic dog was retrieving a stick for its owner. In this idyllic setting the cage stood in stark contrast. Billowing deep grey storm clouds on the horizon were threatening an afternoon downpour.
The ICE Agents had clubs, but they never struck the detainee. They were playing good cop and bad cop with the detainee. They bullied this U.S. Citizen to get her to sign a document that would force her to self deport.
The good cop would talk calmly and reason with the woman in the cage. His demeanor made it clear that he felt he was speaking to a subhuman idiot. He would leave the cage and then his partner would take over and threaten and shout at her.
The cage wasn’t very well built. The jagged metal mesh was exposed around the entry gate and one of the ICE agents literally cut his hand. This wasn’t planned or acted out, he went to get a band aid while the other Agent worked to break the will of the detainee.
The audience stood silently in their white masks. Melanie later explained to me that the masks helped separate the audience from the brutal scene playing out before them. As a sketch artist it kept me from seeing the audience reactions which made the scene creepier.
In a later showing of The Cage, Anna Eskamani, the Florida State Representative for House District 42, bravely sat in as the detainee. Since she had been down to Alligator Alcatraz, she knew how real the scene being portrayed was. Since access inside the detention center is denied to members of Congress, the dark reports coming out are often denied by the average U.S. citizen. The truth is often hard to swallow.
The Cage was honored with a Critics’ Choice Award for Agitprop Production. This special distinction recognized the show’s use of political performance techniques—based on interviews with real-life ICE detainees—designed to spur viewers into action.