Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992

Elvira Evers is a Panamanian woman employed as a general worker and cashier at the Canteen Corporation. In her interview, she recalls being shot in the stomach during the riots—while pregnant. Evers’s friend rushed her to the hospital, where she gave birth via cesarian-section. A doctor then surgically removed the bullet, which was lodged in her baby’s elbow. Had the bullet not landed there, neither Evers nor her baby would have survived the shooting. Evers suggests that her unborn daughter “caught [the bullet] in her arms,” which she frames as a lesson about the importance of “open[ing] your eyes” to one’s surroundings. This reflects the play’s larger theme of opening oneself to the outside world in order to forge connections with others and be a part of a collective consciousness.