Photo by Federico Julián González

Directed and co-written by Janet Moran (A Holy Show, Swing), Looking for América is the real-life story of writer and performer Federico Julián González.

Following his father’s arrest by a Military Junta, at the age of five, Fede and his family were forced to flee the Salvadoran Civil war. There followed years of continuous moving throughout Latin America with his mother and brother as they sought sanctuary.

In 2019, Fede and his 74-year-old mother set off on a quest through Havana to look for América. Shared memories, conflicting recollections and offline maps led them through their past. A past peopled with ghosts scattered among grand avenues, dark lanes and unnerving dead ends in the city that had taken them in, more than 30 years before. They spoke to shop-keepers, taxi drivers, old ladies and more importantly to each other. When they were about to give up, they found her.

Looking for América charts two journeys. The journey of that night in Havana looking for a Salvadoran ex-Guerilla fighter called América, and the journey of escaping the catastrophe that had engulfed his country decades before. A catastrophe whose after effects still resonate today.

Sometimes the idea of home has to be remade.

And remade.

And remade.

Funded by the Arts Council.

Supported by Draíocht Blanchardstown and Pavilion Theatre.

Production Team

Production Managed by Veronica Foo

Stage Managed by Mark Jackson

Produced by Once Off Productions and Mermaid Arts Centre

Line Produced by Cally Shine

Trailer by Ian Whelan

Poster Design by Trebecca Henderson

Creative Team

Written by Federico Julián González & Janet Moran

Directed by Janet Moran

Performed by Federico Julián González

Lighting Design by Colin Doran

AV Design by Neil O’Driscoll

Sound Design by Mark Jackson

Reviews

“the most striking moment is one of discomfort when, midway through the performance, González steps out of his own story to draw our attention to contemporary issues of migration and dispossession. It is a jolt, but a welcome, vital one; González’s story may be a personal one but it has deep political resonance with our own time too.”

- The Irish Times ***

“He makes you smell it and taste it. He makes you understand it in a group of children, displaced by war and violence, who are used to soldiers and death seeking them out, but who play a joyful game of hide and seek in the safety of a hotel garden in a land where they were not born.”

-Stagedoor

“his first-ever performance, delivered with spellbinding storytelling skill – is to remind us all of how quickly we, too, could find ourselves among the wretched of the earth, driven from our homes by fire or water, or by political oppression that suddenly becomes too much to bear.”

- The Scotsman ****