SEEN FROM THE air, El Paso, Texas, is surrounded by a no-man's-land that shimmers menacingly in the blistering summer heat. The overcooked expanse is probably a desert, but surely it's earned the right to be called badlands, however inaccurate the usage may be.

El Paso may be a long way from most places in the United States, but down there you can take a short walk and suddenly find yourself looking at Mexico right across the Rio Grande. And if history – dreams, sacrifices, bitter struggles, and the odd payoff – piled up on the banks like mud does, a pail or two would deliver the pure essence of America. From 10,000 feet, the border, which has everything to do with social, economic, and political life in El Paso, is as abstract as calculus; seeing is believing, and from a 737 it looks like there's only one city down there. It takes a map, an international map, to prove differently. Juárez, Mexico, as volatile as a volcano, is just a short, frantic swim from El Paso.

Playwright and San Francisco resident Octavio Solis grew up in El Paso surrounded by the complications that go with the territory, including displaced people, the INS, papers, poverty, hope, sacrifice, crime, violence, and racial antagonism, to name just a few. All of these are in turn shaped by race, wealth, and, when all is said and done, which side of the river a person is entitled to call home. The border – as a real place and a bittersweet symbol – tattoos all of Solis's work, including El Paso Blue, the Glickman Award-winning Santos and Santos, El Otro, and, most recently, Dreamlandia (opening next week at Thick Description, a theater that was cofounded by my girlfriend, a fact I mention for the purpose of journalistic disclosure). The all-important ditch, the Rio Grande, can – randomly but with undeniable finality – wash away sins as surely as it can the sinner. Its path marks a border that shapes identities, dreams, and desires as well as the practical rhythms of daily life.

"When I was a kid," Solis told me recently, "we were a mile from the border, and at night the family would be outside having Cokes, and you could see the illegals as they walked by, hunched over, moving briskly. Of course, they were trying to get out of sight of the migra, but to me, it seemed like I could feel them trying to find a place in this world. I was fascinated by the paradox that when these men and women came to the land of inalienable rights, they would lose all their rights."

Dreamlandia, inspired by Calderón de la Barca's Life Is a Dream, moves fast-forward through a world scarred by blackmail, drug dealing, and murder. It's grim – most of Solis's work has a hard, ominous edge – but full of surprise and delight. A brother and sister sneak across the border in search of their father, while a young man – imprisoned on an island in the middle of the Rio Grande by a father hoping to sidestep a curse – is about to be freed. The boy has been raised in chains and is strung out on cocaine, back copies of TV Guide, and glossy fashion magazines – which provide him with all he knows about the world. Civilization, a sampler of perfumes, skin creams, and Italian leather – and a place without love – awaits.

The border divides dead and living, parents and children, rich and poor, good and evil, and past and future. Memory scrambles time, and a ghost, burdened by a romantic streak, follows a memory from the past to exact revenge.

Solis's onstage communities are often populated by desperate characters joined by needs that transcend borders. They are, in the real world, invisible: immigrant laborers waiting for work on Cesar Chavez Street, field workers whose calendars are set by crops rather than clocks, janitors cleaning up downtown high-rises late at night, drifters, dopers, and losers who know that the odds are stacked against them. He's more than a writer with a feel for offbeat people and places. His facility with language is at times astounding: characters deliver short bursts of profanity before abruptly changing moods with extravagant, graceful passages that, though thick with challenge and surprise, are never anything less than intensely, passionately human.

Solis also pushes political hot buttons and is given to following his characters into controversy. "Maybe I am a political writer," he said. "But unlike many political writers, I don't offer a single solution. That's for activists and policy makers. But I want to express the things that I see; I want to expose the problems."

To look at the border is, in fact, to see problems. Even the simplest transborder exchanges are loaded. Add race to the equation and the mix is further charged.

"Juárez," Solis elaborated, "is where all the politics, all the dealings between the U.S. and Mexico come to a head. You see and feel them expressed clearly and in detail: the maquiladoras, the INS, illegal immigrants."

There was a time – the mid '90s – when it seemed as if Solis's work could be found on stages all over town. In fact, Santos (produced by Thick Description), Prospect (Magic Theatre), and the second local staging of El Paso Blue (directed by Solis at Intersection for the Arts) all went up during the same year. And people – myself included – figured that Solis and his work would enrich local stages forever. Audiences were knocked out by his plays, and productions featured rock-solid casts with actors like Vilma Silva, Monica Sanchez, Michael Torres, and Luis Saguaar. Solis was stepping into the limelight as a major talent. Then, suddenly – with the exception of Thick Description's 1998 production of El Otro – he seemed to disappear.

In fact, he had been out of town with companies such as the Dallas Theater Center and spent time in Ashland, Ore., where the Oregon Shakespeare Festival staged El Paso Blue. He had also been working on a commission from an important regional theater. During the '90s, work by nonwhite playwrights was finally getting recognition, and major theaters scrambled to stage them. But in some cases, including Solis's, their new plays weren't produced. And when a project is shelved after much work, the process – no matter how good the intentions – is turned inside out.

Solis is a hugely talented writer. Perhaps the commercial world isn't ready for his uncompromising, edgy work – not to mention largely Latino casts. Or perhaps the theaters on the East Coast still haven't heard about California. In any case, Solis is directing the local premiere of Dreamlandia, and while I'm unhappy his work isn't being produced on stages all over the country, I'm glad it's going up here.

Solis kicked off a recent rehearsal by playfully prowling the stage while swinging a plastic bat, which he eventually exchanged for a bullhorn. The atmosphere was light but focused; he gave directions from the second row, tapping the bat in his hand, and the cast poured themselves into the business at hand. After it was over we sat down and talked again.

"It's sometimes distressing," he mused, "when I feel like I've come full circle. I'm in places that can't afford to do a show on the scale that I want to, but I've made my peace with that. I'm happy working with theaters that believe in me. I don't have a company, but I have a posse, and they'll always be working for me if they aren't working someplace else; they're so good. Latino talent is used so badly in this city. I think that there's some great actors, and I like working with them."

No matter how long he stays, Solis seems at home in Thick Description's Potrero Hill theater. He's writing about the border, a seam in the earth and the mind, part river and part dream. He's taken the truths of daily life to create a world of surreal fictions rich with larger, more important truths. The writing is tough, honest, and fired by Solis's fertile imagination – the only element in his career that really matters.