By Joe Gruberman
Splash Magazines
The Phoenix Theatre Company celebrates its 100th-anniversary season this year, smartly choosing a homegrown musical production with a most timely theme as the celebration’s centerpiece. A highly-collaborative piece, Americano! is based on the true story of Arizona “Dreamer” Antonio Valdovinos, a graduate of Camelback High School in Phoenix. On his 18th birthday, Antonio walked into a Marine Corps recruiting station to enlist, only to find out that he was an undocumented immigrant. That jarring revelation propelled Antonio into the center of the immigration controversy that, despite the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), continues to this day.
