A new play stages a teenage immigrant’s harrowing true story

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When you’re watching De Novo, now playing at 59E59, make sure you follow the Spanish. It’s not just a language in the play, but a metaphor for one of America’s most contentious legal systems.

Written by Jeffrey Solomon and the Houses on the Moon Theater Company, De Novo is a documentary piece that uses interviews and court transcripts to tell the real-life story of Edgar Chocoy, a teenager who illegally immigrated to America to flee the street gangs in his native Guatemala. When he got to the States, however, he took part in more gang activity. And then he was pulled into our immigration courts, which sent him back to his native country. And then he got murdered by the very gang he tried to escape.

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