‘Just Like Us’ gives a Denver story urgent new life

Su Teatro revives Just Like Us, a Denver-set immigration drama about friendship and identity.

What makes someone American? That question sits at the center of Just Like Us, Karen Zacarías’ adaptation of journalist Helen Thorpe’s book about four Latina teenagers growing up in Denver whose futures diverge because of immigration status.

In Su Teatro’s moving production, co-directed by Fidel Gomez and Micaela Garcia de Benavidez, the play traces how a single bureaucratic distinction — documented or undocumented — reshapes friendships, ambitions and the idea of belonging itself.

The play follows four high school seniors whose tight-knit friendship begins to fracture as they approach graduation. Clara and Elissa are documented, which means scholarships, college admissions and legal employment await them. Marisela and Yadira are not. Their academic achievements and aspirations suddenly collide with a system that treats them as outsiders in the only country they’ve ever really known.

When the production premiered at the DCPA in 2013, it told a deeply Colorado story that reflected the legislative relationship at the time. Garcia de Benavidez, in her opening-night remarks, argued that, while the play is set in Denver, the story “feels more national now.”

To her point, the United States currently has an estimated 11 to 14 million undocumented immigrants, and the second Trump administration has significantly increased immigration enforcement across the country. In the first ten months of 2025, average daily ICE arrests jumped 170% compared with the final year of the Biden administration.

Even though many of the specific laws discussed in Just Like Us have been changed in Colorado, including the ability for undocumented individuals to receive in-state tuition, the impact of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has been palpable in the state. ICE made at least 3,522 arrests in the state between January and mid-October 2025, quadrupling the pace of arrests from the previous year, with most occurring in the Denver metro area.

Against that backdrop, Su Teatro’s revival lands with bracing immediacy.

A classroom scene in Su Teatro’s production of Just Like Us. Photo by Juan Fuentes

Four girls, one diving line

From its opening moments, Su Teatro’s production makes clear this is both a personal story and a civic one. As projections of Denver landmarks fill the stage, Thorpe, played with thoughtful restraint by Colleen Lee, steps forward to introduce the four young women whose lives she began documenting as a journalist.

The girls soon burst into the space in colorful prom dresses, dancing to ranchera music as they prepare for one of the biggest nights of their senior year. The moment is joyful and familiar. It also quietly sets up the play’s central tension: these young women share the same city, schools and dreams, but the law sees them very differently.

Kiara Plaza gives a standout performance as Marisela, a straight-A student with a sharp wit and an unapologetic sense of self. Marisela is academically gifted, politically outspoken and uninterested in softening the parts of herself that make others uncomfortable. Plaza plays her with infectious charisma but also reveals the frustration simmering beneath her confidence as she watches opportunities open for her friends that remain out of reach for her.

Shyan Rivera’s Yadira offers a striking contrast. Where Marisela pushes outward, Yadira tries to blend in, carefully avoiding attention that might expose her status. Rivera captures that quiet calculation beautifully, particularly as the character confronts the escalating consequences of living without legal status.

Lucinda Lazo’s Clara brings warmth and earnestness to the friend group. She’s proud of her Latina identity and fiercely loyal to her friends, yet she also recognizes that her documented status gives her advantages they do not share. Gisselle Gonzalez’s Elissa rounds out the quartet as the confident overachiever whose path leads her away from the group when she accepts a scholarship to Regis University.

Together, the four actors create an easy camaraderie that makes the gradual strain on their friendship all the more affecting.

Clara (Lucinda Lazo), Marisela (Kiara Plaza), Yadira (Shyan Rivera) and Elissa (Gisselle Gonzalez) at graduation. Photo by Juan Fuentes

The journalist in the room

Thorpe’s presence in the play adds another compelling layer to the storytelling. As the reporter who originally documented the girls’ lives, she functions as both narrator and participant, guiding the audience through the story while grappling with her own position inside it.

Lee plays Thorpe with careful restraint, emphasizing the character’s curiosity and genuine empathy for the young women she’s writing about. But the production doesn’t let Thorpe off the hook entirely. She arrives as an outsider: a white journalist, the wife of then–Denver mayor John Hickenlooper and someone whose immigration experience — moving legally from London to the United States — bears little resemblance to the circumstances facing the girls she’s documenting.

That tension is especially evident late in the play, when Marisela questions Thorpe’s assumptions about what success looks like. Thorpe envisions a path that reflects her own goals of professional success, upward mobility and integration into mainstream American culture. Marisela pushes back, insisting that her identity cannot be neatly divided between Mexican and American expectations. The exchange lands as one of the play’s most revealing moments: Thorpe may be telling the story, but she doesn’t control its meaning.

The rest of the cast serves as a fluid ensemble, shifting between parents, teachers, politicians and love interests. Standout turns include Brandon Guzman, who plays two very different romantic partners for Marisela, and Paola Miranda, whose sharp-tongued hairdresser Yolanda injects bursts of humor into the story.

Joaquin Aviña also makes a memorable impression as former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo, whose anti-immigrant rhetoric once dominated the state’s political conversation. It was abundantly clear that many in the audience at Su Teatro recognized Tancredo and were not fans. On opening night, many people in the crowd booed loudly when Aviña first appeared as Tancredo. Aviña depicts Tancredo as calm and convincing, highlighting how policies affecting these characters are frequently made by those who believe that they are acting in the best interests of the nation.

Colleen Lee plays Helen Thorpe, and Kiara Plaza portrays Marisela Benavidez. Photo by Juan Fuentes

Efficient design, powerful impact

Su Teatro’s staging wisely keeps the focus on the people at the center of that story. Scenic, lighting and projection design by Arnold King rely on a largely open stage with a handful of movable tables and chairs to create classrooms, salons and living rooms with minimal fuss, while two circles of light on either side of the stage frame Thorpe’s narration and the girls’ introductions.

A large circle painted in the center of the stage becomes a recurring visual motif as characters revolve around the same unresolved conflict throughout the play. The ensemble frequently moves in circular patterns as well, reinforcing the sense that immigration status traps the characters in a cycle they can’t escape.

Not every design choice lands as cleanly. King’s projections, which suggest various locations through digitally rendered images, sometimes clash with the otherwise naturalistic performances. Their cartoonish aesthetic feels slightly out of step with the grounded emotional realism unfolding onstage.

Still, the show’s emotional momentum rarely falters. The second act follows the characters into college and early adulthood, where the stakes intensify. Police raids and political backlash reverberate throughout the community following the real-life murder of a Denver police officer by an undocumented immigrant, which sparked heated debates about immigration enforcement at the time.

The cast of Su Teatro’s production of Just Like Us. Photo by Juan Fuentes

The production handles these shifts with care, refusing to flatten the issue into easy answers. Instead, it shows how real-life events and policies affect people’s daily lives. Su Teatro’s production doesn’t pretend to resolve the issue, but it does ask audiences to sit with its complexity and its consequences.

Marisela articulates the play’s thesis most clearly near the end, rejecting the idea that she must choose between identities or ideals. She didn’t choose where she was born or how she arrived in the United States, she insists. She’s simply trying to live the life in front of her.

In that sense, the title says everything. Just Like Us contends that immigration debates often reduce people to statistics and slogans. Su Teatro’s production restores the human faces behind politics by focusing on four young women with dreams, flaws and stubborn resilience, which feels especially important in today’s climate.