Lisa Ramirez gives a platform to the voices of illegal immigrants working at a poultry factory

The plight of the undocumented worker seems to be on the tip of off-Broadway’s tongue these days, what with Elizabeth Irwin’s My Mañana Comes at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater and now Lisa Ramirez’s To the Bone at the Cherry Lane Theatre. While Irwin explores male Mexican émigrés working as Manhattan restaurant busboys, Ramirez takes the female track in her new drama, following a trio of women who immigrated to the United States looking for a better life and instead work in a poultry plant in New York State’s Sullivan County. Inspired by interviews Ramirez conducted with Latina immigrants, To the Bone dramatizes their stories as opposed to creating a piece of verbatim theater. The playwright herself takes the leading role as the strong-willed and strong-minded Olga, who is determined to win better working conditions for herself and her undocumented living companions Reina (Annie Henk) and Juana (Liza Fernandez). A secondary plotline follows the arrival of Carmen (Xochitl Romero), Reina’s niece, who is brutally attacked at the hands of the factory’s manager, Daryl (Haynes Thigpen).