Photo by Morgan Sophia Photography
Audio By Carbonatix
Who gets to be an American, and who gets to make that judgment? That is the question journalist, author, and playwright Nicholas Griffin asked himself while writing his latest play, English Only.
Griffin, who was born in London, first moved to the States when he was 18. He’s been in Miami since the early 2010s. A foreigner by definition and explorer by choice, Griffin dove headfirst into discovering all sorts of truths about his new home.
“This city sticks out in America,” says Griffin. “Every other city is a story of assimilation and integration and the melting pot theory of America. And then you get down to Miami, and this is a city where the immigrants didn’t get absorbed. This is a city where the immigrants absorbed the city itself…It’s what makes Miami different; it’s why Miami is Miami.”
After five years of research and writing, he published his book, The Year of Dangerous Days: Riots, Refugees, and Cocaine in Miami 1980, in 2020. Four years later, Griffin penned a stage adaptation for Miami New Drama, simply titled Dangerous Days. Now, two years after that, he’s back with the world premiere of English Only, also inspired by his 2020 release.
Whereas Dangerous Days, the play, featured nearly a quarter of the stories from the book, English Only was derived from a single paragraph.
“When The Year of Dangerous Days came out, Michel [Hausmann] got very excited, because it’s not just one story; it’s really a plethora of intertwining stories,” Griffin says of Miami New Drama’s artistic director. After reading the book, Hausmann made a list of the potential stories and adaptations they could mine.
One such story was the fight to make English the official language of Miami-Dade in the wake of the Mariel boatlift. “I bet you know a whole lot more about this,” Hausmann said to Griffin. And he was right.
The writer says he’d written pages and pages more about the topic — three chapters, to be exact — but these were ultimately cut from the book. “I was trying to tell the story in a sort of active way, of how you could get such an abrupt shift in demographics in one year in a city. It’s not only an abrupt shift in demographics, but it’s also the reaction by the community to it, and then the reaction after the reaction of how Miami politics get reshaped.”
Griffin was fascinated by how, in the 1980s, only about 17 percent of Cubans were registered to vote, even though they made up more than 50 percent of the population at the time. “It’s a bizarre moment where you have the numbers, but you don’t have the votes,” he says. Language became a wedge issue in the 1980 election.
English Only features a small cast of characters, some of whom are based on notable historical figures, such as former mayor Manny Diaz and Emmy Schaefer, who spearheaded the campaign against bilingualism in Miami. Others are amalgamations of people from the time period.
On stage, both sides present compelling arguments. In this battle for language, “both arguments are valid,” says Hausmann. “And [Griffin] expresses them in a way that will resonate with our audience and doesn’t villainize anyone but sort of lets the audience decide how they feel about the issue.”
More than 40 years after the debate, Hausmann is struck by the play’s relevance. “I believe every generation needs to fight similar battles, and we’re in the middle of the battle of our generation,” he says. Still, he remains hopeful: “Even when injustice happens, the arc of justice ultimately prevails.”
English Only. 8 p.m. Thursday, January 29 through Friday, February 13, at The Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach. 305-674-1040; miaminewdrama.org.
