An American Life

Una vida americana
by Lucía Carballal (Spain), 2018
Two female, one male, and one non-binary.

Nominated five times for the 2018 Max Awards, Spain, including Best Playwright

Published in bilingual edition by Ediciones Antígona.

Somewhere in the forest of Minnesota, a Spanish family sets up camp on a translatlantic quest for meaning and closure, ill-advised or no. Far from their home in the Madrid barrio of Tetuán, Paloma and her children Linda and Robin Rose search for the man who has marked all of their lives: a US wanderer whom Paloma fell in love with in the heady days of Spain’s transition to democracy. Their romance echoed the passionate coupling of Spain and the States, characterised by NATO bases, Bruce Springsteen and burger bars. But once parenthood hit and the artex walls became stifling, he disappeared, leaving Paloma to raise their offspring as best she could. Now, to help her daughter Linda drag herself out of a well of depression, Paloma lands beside Crow Lake on the hunt for a missing father figure, while her other child, Robin Rose, tires of explaining that being non-binary really is no big deal. When Linda’s hapless boyfriend Levi travels halfway across the world to follow her, and a mysterious man appears on the waterside, some sense of closure hovers closer. But there’ll be storm before the calm: we’re not in Tetuán any more..

There was a man there. On the other side of the lake. A man, alone, far away, leaning on the bonnet of a pickup truck. By the time I saw him… I’d already taken my clothes off, the water was up to my ankles. I thought, ‘Very good, Linda, here you are in the middle of the night, naked, offering yourself to a stranger; is that the best you can come up with?’ He was very far away, but I could feel him staring at me. I thought it was the end, but I swam towards him.

This translation of An American Life was commissioned by the London Spanish Theatre Company and was first performed as a rehearsed reading at the Cervantes Theatre, London, in May 2018. It was directed by Lilac Yosiphon and the cast was Moir Leslie, Becky Black, Adela Leiro and Michael Timney.

Trailer from the Max Award-nominated Madrid production, 2018.