THE SHOW

Tell My Puppy I’m Coming Home is a one-human show about a documented queer immigrant who despite her best efforts is forced to return “home”. Since she last visited eight years ago, much has changed. A now powerful community leader, she returns to a family that no longer knows her, a country that has never accepted her, and a childhood whose scars return when her feet touch the land.

A production about family, precarity, and victorious return, this show weaves in and out of poetry, narrative, and humour in its exploration of displacement, immigration, and the diaspora experience.

On the outset, the show is a simple tale of a boi trying to return to her ride or die four-legged child. On further exploration, the story is a complex narrative of a broken immigration system, queerness and belonging, family, reconciliation, departure, and just a touch of absurdity. 

THE REASON

I am a queer non-citizen who has been living in the U.S. for the last 18 years under various immigration statuses. I went from being on a student visa to a work visa to a marriage visa, each with their fair share of complications and a little more. But nothing like what I went through in 2018.

Imagine doing every thing right and watching the administration cover its bases, one fumble at a time while I paid the price for it, with my life and my bank account.

The one question I am always on the receiving end of is “why not just become a U.S. citizen?” It is with this same callous, irresponsible confidence that so many Americans are quick to designate undocumented immigrants as illegal.

Immigration has historically been a matter of much conflict in the U.S. For the amount of airtime, debate time, and dinner table conversation time that is spent on the subject, it is alarming how little Americans know about the immigration system and its many fractured limbs. 

This project hones in on the lesser told truths of documented immigration. It reveals the trauma in the precarity of belonging when borders are involved with no conscience for those who live in between them. 

Tell My Puppy I’m Coming Home brings to the forefront an urgent narrative on the crisis of displacement when immigrants are encountered with the unseen authority of a system that was founded in racism and queerphobia.

TELL MY PUPPY I’M COMING HOME is coming to the Tampa Bay Area in Fall 2025!!!

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