Making dreams pop: Inside the first revival of Chewing Gum Dreams

“It’s like chewing gum itself. It’s this refreshing thing at the beginning that tastes really good. And then the taste is gone.”

Lauryn Ajufo is on day three of rehearsals to play Tracey Gordon in the first-ever revival of Chewing Gum Dreams when we catch up over video call, but she has an interesting understanding of the title.

“It’s kind of like Tracey’s dreams. She had them. They were there. It tasted so good. And then it just disappeared, and she had to get rid of it.”

In the autobiographical play, first written and performed by Michaela Coel, the schoolgirl is 14 and encountering boys, sex, and friendships, as well as race inequality, politics, and religion. A solo show, Ajufo performs as Tracey and as the people she encounters – her friends, her love interests, her family and more.

“I think when you read the play, you’re like, this is so funny. She’s got great characters in here, she’s multi-rolling, but I think once you understand where Tracey’s trying to go or the direction she’s been put in already, you just resonate with her a bit more.”

Ajufo is now in her mid-20s, the same age as Tracey in the TV adaptation of the play. Though she can still remember being the girl who wouldn’t stop talking in maths class. Directed by Theatre503’s artistic director Anthony Simpson-Pike as part of his first season, it’s likely the sold-out audiences will include people who first encountered the material as teens.

“It will be so interesting to see how they view her now as adults, because young people will have watched it and thought, ‘Oh, this is just a really funny play about a 14-year-old black girl with issues’, whereas now it’s like, hopefully they understand there’s a deeper undercurrent. Essentially, most of it is just a mask, and it’s because she doesn’t know any better.”

Simpson-Pike explains that one of the early rehearsal conversations has been about who gets to dream. He recalls a “really beautiful and sad moment” when Tracey talks about the dreams of her crush, the blue-eyed Connor, and how she, too, used to have them. “But she murdered every one of her dreams because the universe that’s being offered to her is a smaller universe than is being offered to him.”

Underneath the comedy, which involves candid observations about periods, emergency contraception, and classroom antics, “There’s a very sophisticated set of questions around class and inequality and colourism and race and who gets to have dreams… There’s a real emotional core to it,” the director says.

He actually wrote to Coel and explained his goal as the new AD. The new strand of work is about taking classic debuts and “focusing on work that we feel that we should reclaim as part of the canon, often by marginalised writers who aren’t always thought of as part of the canon.”

He observes: “It’s about saying debuts aren’t just the first pancake that goes wrong and then you make the beautiful second pancake that everyone loves. Debuts like [Chewing Gum Dreams] really can reshape the industry, and the form as well, and they can be really revolutionary and really radical.”

When it came to casting the teen, Simpson-Pike had his eye on Ajufo after seeing her making her professional stage debut in John Proctor is the Villain. He texted the casting director and made sure she was on the list. “We really wanted it to be a moment of passing the baton on and working with a younger actor who is incredible in their own right and has already proved their own talent and could just take this moment and make it their own,” he says, smiling at the performer.

Coincidentally, after the news was announced, the actress was out in Shoreditch and stumbled upon a film set, recognising an intimacy coordinator friend she’d just worked with. The friend told her that it was Coel filming and introduced the pair. Ajufo recalls: “She hugged me and said congratulations and that she’s very excited and had heard great things and wishes us the best. I was like, ‘oh, this is all I needed’.”

“One thing that my mum always says is like, what’s meant for you will never pass you by,” she smiles.

Looking back at what she was like at 14, Ajufo recalls it being a “weird age,” saying, “you want to be a kid, because you are, but you also want to prove to everybody that you’re worthy and you are an adult.” Specifically, the performer can say she relates to Tracey wanting to be accepted: “You want to be a part of the popular crew. You want all the boys to like you. You just want to be the cool kid.”

“Reading it as a 26-year-old now, I sympathise with her a lot more, and I just want to hold her hand and guide her through it the right way. Because what you see is that there are two paths that she could go down, and because of the inequality she faces in life and the things that she’s already been given, her path has already been chosen for her, which is quite sad.”

For the new revival, none of the script has been changed and – spoiler alert – the set will still revolve around a chair, and feature the UK garage Tracey loves to listen to. The design team has built a set that holds our protagonist’s inner space.

“I think that part of the point is that there are still lots of Traceys now, and that this play has a sort of resonance that goes beyond a specific moment in time. It feels very contemporary as it is… And the issues that it explores feel like they’re still the things that we’re talking about right now.”

Simpson-Pike quotes “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”, the famous French proverb which translates to “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

“And I kind of want to make that point as well.”