9 January 29 - February 4, 2026 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | Month XX–Month XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Language Arts Playwright Nicholas Griffin’s English Only recounts Miami’s fight to stay bilingual. BY CAROLINA DEL BUSTO W ho gets to be an Ameri- can, and who gets to make that judgment? That is the question jour- nalist, author, and play- wright 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 for- eigner 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 Grif- fin. “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 immi- grants 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, sim- ply titled Dangerous Days. Now, two years after that, he’s back with the world premiere of Eng- lish Only, also inspired by his 2020 release. Whereas Dangerous Days, the play, fea- tured 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, be- cause 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 Eng- lish the official language of Miami-Dade in the wake of the Mariel boatlift. “I bet you know a whole lot more about this,” Haus- mann 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 demo- graphics, but it’s also the reaction by the com- munity 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 char- acters, some of whom are based on notable historical figures, such as former mayor Manny Diaz and Emmy Schaefer, who spear- headed the cam- paign against bilingualism in Mi- ami. Others are amalgamations of people from the time period. On stage, both sides present com- pelling arguments. In this battle for language, “both ar- guments are valid,” says Hausmann. “And [Griffin] expresses them in a way that will resonate with our audience and doesn’t vil- lainize 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 re- mains hopeful: “Even when injustice hap- pens, 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. [email protected] ▼ Culture René Granado as Stan Rogers and Andhy Mendez as Manny Diaz in English Only. Morgan Sophia Photography “THIS IS A CITY WHERE THE IMMIGRANTS ABSORBED THE CITY ITSELF... 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