My Mañana Comes

A SAMUEL FRENCH, INC. TITLE

My Mañana Comes

Full-Length Play, Drama  /  4m

Just beyond the elegant dining room of an Upper East Side restaurant, four busboys angle for shifts, pray for tips, and cling to dreams of life beyond their dingy back-of-house grind.

Image: 2014 Playwrights Realm Production (Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade)

  • Cast Size
    Cast Size
    4m
  • Duration
    Duration
    90 minutes
  • SubGenre
    Subgenre
    Not Applicable
  • Audience
    Target Audience
    Adult
Accolades
Accolades
  • Nominee: Two 2015 Drama Desk Awards, including Best Play
    Nominee: Two 2015 Lucille Lortel Awards, including Outstanding Play
    Nominee: Two 2015 Outer Critics Circle Awards, including the John Gassner Award for New American Play

Details

Summary
Just beyond the elegant dining room of an Upper East Side restaurant, four busboys angle for shifts, pray for tips, and cling to dreams of life beyond their dingy back-of-house grind. Expertly juggling delicate entrees, fussy customers and beer-swilling line cooks, the young men face off with management and each other. As tensions reach a boiling point, how far will each of them go to see his own mañana come?
History
My Mañana Comes premiered at Playwrights Realm in August of 2014, under the direction of Chay Yew. 

PETER – (late 20’s), male, black American busser/runner, easily the best at his job, a born New Yorker, lives uptown in West Harlem with his long-term girlfriend and daughter, four year veteran of the restaurant; his casually gruff fallback demeanor belies his deep moral convictions. He is rarely effusive and with the exception of his outbursts near the end of the play, he is detached, cool, emotions always in check. Seemingly unshakeable.

JORGE – (late 20’s), male, Mexican busser/runner, immigrated from Puebla almost four years ago, lives in Corona. Short but maybe slightly taller than Pepe, indigenous features, reserved, a quiet maturity and deliberateness in his manner. A significant level of comfort/familiarity with the U.S. culture/people. A quiet sense of judgment comes from him at times; he is not so harmless as he may initially appear. Has been faithfully sending money home to his wife and children for the past four years.

PEPE – (early 20s), male, Mexican busser/runner, immigrated from Juarez three months ago, lives in Corona as well but in a different building. Short with indigenous features, eager, restless, lacking a poker face in all ways. He is excited and excitable in this new life in New York. His youth is apparent in his weakness for instant gratification and the shiny, the new, the cool, be it an object or relationship.

WHALID – (mid to late 20’s), male, busser/runner, has worked at the restaurant a few weeks, third generation Mexican-American, grandparents from Oaxaca, grew up in Coney Island with the only Mexicans around him his immediately family/grandparents. Might still lives with his parents but he certainly does not advertise it and plans to get his own apartment as soon as he can. Carries a sense of knowing on any given topic, quick-tongued, above average height, handsome, very Brooklyn, seems more Puerto Rican/Italian than Mexican. His love of romantic conquests is a part of creating a respected adult persona for himself, as is trying to find work he can feel proud to do.

Pepe and Jorge often speak Spanish in the play, and it is recommended that they be fluent. Whalid speaks Spanish too, but with less frequency.

  • Time Period Contemporary, Present Day, New Millennium/21st Century
  • Setting A restaurant on 66th street and Madison Ave, a particularly tony block.
  • Features Contemporary Costumes / Street Clothes
  • Additional Features No intermission
  • Duration 90 minutes
  • Cautions
    • Strong Language
    • Mild Adult Themes

Media

“Character study with a political edge — honed nearly as sharp as the men’s paring knives.” – The New York Times

“By turns humorous and haunting.” – New York Daily News, Read More

“Elizabeth Irwin’s involving, thoughtful My Mañana Comes… is character study with a political edge — honed nearly as sharp as the men’s paring knives.” – The New York Times, Read More

“Irwin writes fast, funny, lived-in dialogue.” – Time Out New York, Read More

“Irwin takes a boning knife to the stereotyped class of Mexican busboys... a surprisingly complex taste of the American Dream.” – TheatreMania, Read More

ON BREAKING CHARACTER

Scene Study and Classroom Reading: Plays for Colleges and Universities
by Becca Schlossberg
August 23, 2019

Politically Charged, Utterly Human: MY MAÑANA COMES and the work of Elizabeth Irwin
by Maddie Gaw
November 6, 2015

The Struggle of Class: MY MAÑANA COMES
by Ben Coleman
July 24, 2015

Editing Room: Behind the Scenes of a Playwright’s Script
by Elizabeth Irwin
July 23, 2015

Videos

  • My Mañana Comes - Playwrights Realm youtube thumbnail

    My Mañana Comes - Playwrights Realm

Photos

  • My Mañana Comes

    Image: 2014 Playwrights Realm Production (Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade)

Licensing & Materials

  • Minimum Fee: $110 per performance

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Authors

Elizabeth Irwin

Elizabeth Irwin was born in Worcester, raised by Brooklyn and finished by el D.F. (aka Mexico City). She was a 2013-14 Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow and is a member of the Public Theater’s 2015 Emerging Writer’s Group. Her play My Mañana Comes received its off-Broadway deb ...
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