Lunatic 19s – A Deportational Road Trip, the new play from young American playwright Tegan McLeod will have its world premiere at Finborough Theatre next month. Time to book your tickets!
McLeod’s first full length play to be staged in the UK, Lunatic 19s runs from 9 July to 3 August 2019.
Recovering from a serious car crash, Gracie, an undocumented Latina migrant worker from Kentucky, is tracked down to her hospital bed by immigration enforcement officer Alec. Dragged from hospital, she is chained and forced into a van to begin the long journey to deportation.
Lunatic 19s tells a human story from the heart of the current debate about migration and refugees, while reveling in the brutal surrealism of jailer and prisoner bound together on a road trip to exile and new beginnings.
The two-hander features Gabriela Garcia as Gracie, with Devon Anderson as Alec.
Lunatic 19s marks a change of pace for Garcia, who has previously appeared in a number of musical theatre productions, most recently playing Maria in West Side Story at the Royal Exchange, Manchester. Her other credits include Strictly Ballroom, In The Heights, Ghost, Sweet Charity and Rent.
Anderson came to performance at a young age, playing Billy Jackson in EastEnders and Sonny Valentine in Hollyoaks. More recently, his stage credits have include #Hashtag Lightie.
Jonathan Martin directs Lunatic 19s. The former Principal of Drama Centre, London, he has directed productions including Insignificance (Liverpool Playhouse), The False Servant (Gate Theatre) and Blood Wedding (Half Moon Theatre), which was described as “Compelling” by The Independent and “Probably one of the most uplifting and colourful versions of this classic play yet” by Caribbean Times.
Martin is joined in the creative team by designer Carla Goodman, lighting designer Kevin Treacy and sound designer Juan Ernesto Diaz.
Playwright McLeod is a native of Iowa City, who moved to the UK, studied English Literature at Oxford and acted with the National Youth Theatre. Her first play, Never Such Rain, which was written when she was just 18, was a runner-up in the Oxford New Writer’s Festival. Lunatic 19s was a runner-up in for the prestigious Papatango Prize.
More about Tegan McLeod
On completing her studies at Oxford University, US playwright Tegan McLeod became one of only two playwrights, internationally, to be awarded a full scholarship to the University of Texas as a Michener Fellow in Playwriting and Screenwriting. While at UT,she staged a number of productions including her first opera, Rose Made Man, about Trans identity. Her other plays include Girls in Cars Underwater, which was featured in Chicago’s Ignition Festival in 2016, Never Such Rain, Cold Water Army, City of Spare Parts, Swivet and Lover Think Lover, which was included in The New Group’s Soring Reading Festival in 2018.
