By Lena Moreno, April 28, 2026
A chance at a regular day in Harry Chin’s life is quickly altered through the haunting of ghosts from his pasts: his dead wife, a friend lost in immigration detention and his abandoned ex-wife in China.
In Jessica Huang’s play “The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin,” these figures force Chin to reckon with his choices that shaped his estranged reality with his daughter Sheila. The spring production was staged in Cal Poly Pomona’s Studio Theatre in Building 25 and ran from April 22-26.
The final week of performances ended off with Huang speaking to students and the cast April 23 at the Bronco Student Center. This event was part of the theater department’s three-part conversation series, “Art on Paper: Paper forms that bring culture, personal stories to life.”
Chin’s late wife, Laura, played by English education student Britain McElrea, serves as a reminder of the past he abandoned, while Sheila, played by theater student Angie Lee, is left to keep her father afloat.
By visiting Chin unexpectedly, they resurface memories while in ghost form, making him revisit the secrets he repressed to survive as a paper son, a Chinese immigrant who entered the United States fraudulently in the Chinese Exclusion Era.
The creative team transformed the small performance space in the Studio Theatre with a landscape that stretches across the entire stage. Utilizing a projection design provides a dreamlike and nightmare background where memories of the past and present coexist, according to theatre lecturer and director Paula Weston Solano.
The play explores politically and emotionally charged themes, focusing on the cost of being categorized as “illegal” and the generational burdens that follow in the face of survival.
Solano said incorporating a difference in height with the staging reflects these themes, making audiences aware they are stepping into Chin’s complex consciousness.
Chin’s story is based on a real Chinese immigrant of the Chinese Exclusion Act whose experience inspired Huang’s script, according to Solano. She also emphasized how the cast and crew approached the story diligently to honor the sacrifice of immigrants.
“We’re hoping that it resonates universally, which is sadly the reality of what we’re dealing with,” Solano said. “What it means to have federal governmental actions and acts against groups of people, ‘the others,’ and keeping them out. We’re experiencing it today with ICE.”
The designers and actors, including Solano, made many personal connections to the story in the rehearsal process. Solano shared her grandparents came to the U.S. during the Exclusion Act through the Seattle Detention Center, where Harry also came from.
The production’s small cast brings these emotional histories onstage with most of the cast doubling roles. Theater student Gabrielle Manuel plays two emotional anchors of the story: Yuet, who is Chin’s first wife, and their daughter Susan.
Both characters are the representation between Chin’s past and present, Manuel said. This circles back to Chin’s emotional consequences he made for a life in the U.S. as a result.
Manuel also described how the costume design of the production helped her shift between her two roles, as the production consists of many costume changes.
“The costumes are my favorite part,” Manuel said. “When I’m in it, I think it’s more transformative and there’s a lot that has gone into it like the buttons, the details of the lace and how it’s built.”
Christopher Hernandez, a history student who plays a double role as Boss and Interrogator, represents the pressures placed on immigrants to assimilate and conform.
Boss is shown in Chin’s present at his restaurant job, while Interrogator shows up in Chin’s past in the immigration detention center. They both embody the institutional and authoritative power that shaped Chin’s experience with racism in America at different stages in his life.
By separating these characters into two distinct figures, the play highlights different forms of pressures placed on immigrants. There is an institutional force portrayed by Interrogator and American labor demands embodied by Boss, Hernandez said.
These forces place immense pressure on immigrants, weighing heavily on Chin and on Poet, who is played by theater student Brandon Dieu. Poet traveled with Chin from China to the U.S. before their detainment.
Hernandez said Boss is representative of how everyday Americans conform to their prejudice behaviors out of stress and societal pressures.
The irony of the situation, according to Hernandez, is how Interrogator holds authoritative power under a system that once targeted him as a Hispanic man.
“It just shows how much pressure and American society can push somebody to do all these things, say all these things,” Hernandez said.
