Recreating hazardous journey to US rings true with actors

The young actor's mother immigrated to the U.S. illegally years ago, fleeing the violence of her native El Salvador after seeing a cousin hacked to death by soldiers with machetes during the country's civil war.

For two hours he'd been joined by six actors on a sparse stage filled with large boxes and blocks, illuminated by flashing strobe lights and filled with rattling sounds, all created to mimic the perilous 2,000-mile journey across Mexico's midsection that thousands of unaccompanied children make each year when they climb aboard La Bestia (Spanish for The Beast), the freight train that will carry them north to the United States and, maybe, to new lives.

Chibas, whose previous works include the one-woman show "Daughter of a Cuban Revolutionary," is herself the child of Raul Chibas, who co-wrote the Sierra Manifesto with Fidel Castro that called for replacing Cuba's dictatorship with a constitutional democracy.

Influential people might see this and be inspired to come up with solutions.

Because that's what we do as actors, right?