
Have you ever wondered what goes on in the minds of 16-year-old girls? That is the exploration that Scottish playwright turned Florida resident Steve McMahon takes us on in his play Two of Us on the Run, receiving its world premiere at Florida Atlantic University’s Theatre Lab beginning Saturday.
The play, a free-form road trip for a pair of teenage runaways, dubbed simply J and C, began in McMahon’s mind in 2017, soon after the first election of Donald Trump. “So I think it began as just sort of questioning where I was at as someone who’s chosen to live in America. I just got married as well, and kind of was wondering about the future, and trying to imagine what America must be like for young people,” he says. “And I think that was sort of a projection of my own hopes and fears.”
McMahon’s ability to craft authentic-sounding dialogue for contemporary teenage girls is what drew director Margaret Ledford to the play, which she first staged in Theatre Lab’s 2023 Festival of New Plays. “I’m fascinated that he has been able to do that,” she says. “And I love how it is written on the page because it almost looks like poetry. But what it does for us in the rehearsal room is it gives us great playing ground. It’s pretty free form, so it allows us to find the truth in the words.”
FAU graduate Kimberly Nicole Harvey, who plays J in this world premiere production, says “I agree with Margaret that it’s a little bit scary, how well he knows what teenage girls experience. I think what it tells me as a young female is that he pays attention to what is happening in the country and how that could make someone else feel. I think that’s what’s really powerful about this script.
“Yes, Steve’s not a teenage girl, but it shows his empathy and his ability to kind of put himself in a different situation and see how those things that are scary to him could be doubly scary for a young person, particularly a young girl whose rights are being affected. You know, J is a very passionate character, and I think that Steve captured how fear and feeling powerless can really affect a young girl,” Harvey said.
The playwright readily notes that he has no sisters or daughters, so his depiction of the young girls is pure conjecture on his part. “Yeah, I don’t know many teenagers, so this is truly a leap of imagination and fiction,” McMahon says. “I think about my own experiences, you know, as a teenager, but being a teenage boy is far less complicated than being a teenage girl, from what I’ve heard.”
Then why did he write about girls instead of boys? “I think I thought about the kind of Thelma and Louise thing of, you know, girls in a sort of road trip movie,” he responds, referring to the iconic 1991 Susan Sarandon-Geena Davis film. “And it’s more interesting to deal with the vulnerability of young women changing their lives completely by leaving the comfort of their homes and setting out on the road.”
Harvey read the stage directions at the 2023 reading. As she recalls, “I had just graduated college, and I was very green, just absorbing everything that was happening in the rehearsal room and watching Margaret direct. I remember just watching and observing and thinking like, ‘I just want to do this. I just want to be part of it, absolutely.’ When I found out that this would be part of the season, I was like, I have to do everything that I can to be cast.”
McMahon concedes that Two of Us on the Run is a Scotsman’s view of America. “I’ve lived in the States for a while, but, you know, I’m not American. So I did ask, for authenticity’s sake, are there things in here that sound a little off to you? Because they might not be the way that people speak here. And my point of view is definitely an outsider’s look, in some ways, of America. And anyway, this play is not supposed to be a real America, but a sort of imagined one, from movies, from Sam Shepard plays, a Springsteen song, things like that.”
Those who attended the reading two years ago will not encounter a drastically different script now. “I think I’d gone through quite a few iterations and drafts with the play before it got to Matt (Stabile, Theatre Lab’s artistic director) to read. And since then, there hasn’t been any sort of structural changes, maybe just nip and tuck sort of stuff here and there,” says McMahon. “Some of the dialogue had become dated since 2017, some language that teenagers don’t use anymore, so I had to sort of defer to our younger performers, asking ‘What do people say?’”
Still, McMahon adds, “I think this is one of the quickest plays I wrote in terms of getting it all on the page. I think I sort of knew where I wanted to go with it quite quickly. Some scenes moved around in a couple different drafts here there, and there’s a couple of sort of interruptions almost in the play, sort of interludes where the girls speak to the audience, and they maybe moved around a couple times.”
While he wrote Two of Us on the Run about a pair of teenage girls, McMahon is aware that his audience at Theatre Lab will be considerably older than J and C. “One thing the play is about is young people sort of wanting to accuse the older generations of the world that they’ve left for us, that we’ve inherited from you. So I would love to sort of see how different generations react and respond to the play, and if younger people sort of feel that they are being misrepresented.
“So I do think that ideally the audience would be as diverse as possible, because people should all be bringing their experience to watching the play,” McMahon said. “I don’t think the audience would be passive, because I think it’ll make you think about when you were young, and what you knew your life would be like when you were young, but also make you think about your position now.”
Although there are no further productions of Two of Us on the Run planned, McMahon has received encouragement from other National New Play Network companies. And the fact that the play has only a cast of three and no scenic requirements works in its favor. “Yeah, it’s something you could do with just the imagination of audience members watching actors in the space. It doesn’t need to have anything to dress it up. It’s cheap if you want to produce it.”
Two of Us on the Run plays out in a brisk 75 minutes, with plenty of themes and messages to catch if you are looking for them. Just ask playwright McMahon. “But I think with all the stuff in there that’s about politics, or about violence, about the country, about social issues, ultimately, they’re all viewed through the lens of a friendship,” he says. “It’s about a friendship in the world and the story that is created by the two characters together. It’s about the things that happen to them, informing who they are and who they are to each other. And I think it really is about that friendship and experiencing life in the world together.”
TWO OF US ON THE RUN, Florida Atlantic University Theatre Lab, Parliament Hall, FAU Campus, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton. Saturday, Feb. 1–Sunday, Feb. 16. $35-$45. 561-297-6124.