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Alan Cumming’s ‘Legal Immigrant’ Couldn’t be More Relevant Right Now: LISTEN

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Legal Immigrant is a laugh-out-loud meditation on Alan Cumming’s ten years as an American citizen and the experiences and change he has witnessed during his time living in the States. With a set list that includes songs made famous by Adele, Peggy Lee and Edith Piaf and composers as diverse as Cole Porter, Sondheim and Schubert, Legal Immigrant is as eclectic, vulnerable and charismatic as Alan Cumming himself.

Audible recorded Cumming’s two nights at the Minetta Lane Theatre to make the production available to listeners all over the world. The audio edition of Legal Immigrant includes additional content not performed in any of the live editions of the show that will be available exclusively for Audible listeners. This content includes Alan’s interviews with his friends and colleagues about their American immigration experiences.

Cumming says of the show, “I’m excited that the form of cabaret is being added to Audible’s theatre roster, and honored that my cabaret show is the first! I’ve always loved working for Audible and it’s great to be collaborating with them in this new way.”

GAYNRD spoke to Cumming about the show.

Cumming told us that when first started developing it, “it was really because it was 10 years since I had become a citizen. That is what prompted me to do it, and then in course of thinking about that, all the anti immigration type stuff happened. And the biggest catalyst was when the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services changed its mission statement to eliminate a passage that describes the U.S. as ‘a nation of immigrants’ in 2018. I was completely shocked. So that was kinda what did it.”

How long have you been living in the United States? I’ve been living in NY for about 20 years. In ’1996 I went to LA and made a couple of films and immediately rushed back to Europe and then came back.

What do you think, from your perspective, what would you say overall has changed in the 20 years that you have been coming back and forth to the United States and in the 10 years since you have been a citizen? There’s more fear of the other. Fear is being used as a weapon by this administration. It’s also part of a broader anti-intellectual attitude. Ignorance is a badge of pride now. And I think those things are connected.

Fear is being used as a way of getting people to do what you want and you don’t want people to be educated or to analyze too much, it’s easier to be brainwashed. And I do feel that that’s absolutely what’s happening.The whole thing about doing the show for me was to say, let’s stand back a little bit and look at what we are being told to believe and what we are being asked to repeat and it’s actually the antithesis of what this country is all about.

The idea of the United Sates as being anti-immigration and something patriotic is a lie. This whole country is based, built on, built by immigrants, founded by the notion of immigration, the idea that if you’re pro-immigration  means you’re anti-American. And I’m just trying to address it in a humorous and witty way.

I’m also specifically talking about my experience and my frustrations about seeing those things while simultaneously celebrating immigration.

Do you think that if you were to apply for immigration today that it would be tougher for you?  Oh my god, yeah! I mean after all the stuff I’ve been saying, yeah. I don’t think I would get in right now. 

[Laughing] You’d probably be like on the domestic terrorist list. Totally. Totally. I mean I, I think that…[laughs]

If you had to say “Why you’re proud to be American?” or “What it feels like to be American for you?” What would you say that means?  To me that I’m part of a country of people who are all different who are trying to find a commonality, that it’s about the idea that we are bringing all parts of the world together. And trying to make a better world. That’s what I feel the American Dream is about, the American experiment is. To me being an American is  all about possibilities… that’s what I felt when I became a citizen. And I feel that there are many things that I have in my life that I would not have were I not an American, but there are many things that I feel that I am restricted by now because I’m, because I’m an American. And that’s what I think is dangerous…and that’s what I think the biggest thing about being an American is something worth fighting for.

When you say restricted, what are you referring to exactly? The idea that the future is going to be not as full of people who are different from me. The idea that it’s going to be full of people who look like me. There’s going to be less, obviously less diversity. And I think I feel restricted as well in that the way that the situation is going I wonder how long it will be before I am the target. 

Right. Like just my being queer. Even though I’m an affluent privileged white man it just moves to the T to the G or the B of the acronym, and I’m next. And I wonder how long, if Trump gets in again, and I wonder how long before I start to feel unsafe in my home.

You can listen to Legal Immigrant here.

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