In 2018, Martyna Majok wrote a play. It was called Queens, about a group of immigrant women living in a basement in Queens, New York. It had its premiere Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center but received mixed reviews, with critics praising its setup but let down by its conclusion.

Disappointed, Majok put the play away. But the characters haunted her—during the pandemic, after Majok got a Tony Award nomination for her play Cost of Living, after she started working on The Great Gatsby musical with Florence Welch. “I love these women,” says Majok, speaking of the characters with a deep love like they're family. And in a sense, they are: The women in Queens remind Majok of her own mother, a Polish immigrant who cleaned houses to get by, as well as other immigrant women that she had grown up with in Queens, New York, and then New Jersey. Queens follows women who are from Ukraine, Honduras, Poland, Afghanistan—composites of women that Majok knew. And in an illegal basement dwelling in Queens, they form a makeshift family.

After that first production and the critical response, Majok felt like she couldn't put these characters in a drawer and let them go; until she got their story right, she would never be able to truly rest. Exclaimed Majok: "I endeavored to make it into a mini series. And I just kept on looking at a number of these stories in different lenses. I worried that it had broken me. I was like, 'This is my last play. I can't write another play again.'"

Now, Majok is getting a chance to revisit Queens, as it gets a whole new production at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Off-Broadway space, now extended through December 7. The cast contains a mix of actors new to the play (such as six-time Emmy nominee Anna Chlumsky and Tony nominee Julia Lester) and actors who deeply know Majok’s work—such as Marin Ireland (who starred in Majok's New York debut, Ironbound). It's been cathartic for Majok: "The first day of rehearsal, I was already sobbing, like when I was heading up in the elevator." 

Nadine Malouf starred in Queens in 2018, and when she was asked to come back, it was a no-brainer. She is an immigrant herself (Malouf was raised in Australia, where her mother and grandmother emigrated from Egypt). 

“[My grandmother] immigrated from Egypt to Australia and had no agency whatsoever,” says Malouf. “And I just think about her, and the challenges that she faced—she spoke four languages, but just not English, and she was looked at as stupid, she was talked to as stupid … I carry that and I think of that in all the work I do, but particularly this play, because I think it speaks to that experience so, so beautifully.”

Majok immigrated to the U.S. from Poland when she was a child. As someone who grew up low income, with a single mom, Majok has dedicated her career to shining a light on people who live their lives on the margins of society—whether it's caregivers and people living with disabilities in Cost of Living, or four women in an illegal basement apartment in Queens. 

As someone who usually goes into her plays with an idea of how she wants things to end, Majok admits that during the first go-around of Queens, she was so inspired by the characters, and the actors playing them, that she kept expanding everyone’s individual stories until, she admitted, she lost “the narrative thread that propelled it.” 

After she put Queens away, musician Florence Welch invited her to work on The Great Gatsby (Welch had seen Majok's Sanctuary City, about a green card marriage). Initially, the idea seemed to be outside of Majok's typical point of interest—the characters were wealthy, white, and careless. But then, Majok realized what F. Scott Fitzgerald was trying to say about America: "the American Dream is a fallacy," says Majok. Gatsby had its world premiere last year at American Repertory Theatre, to positive reviews—though its prospective Broadway run was delayed due to another Great Gatsby musical getting there first. Majok hints that her Gatsby is planning a London run in the 2026–27 season.

But in the meantime, pondering F. Scott Fitzgerald's words has helped Majok figure out what is the story she wants to tell in Queens. She has cut the character list from 11 to 8, and most of the play has been thoroughly rewritten, particularly the second act. If Gatsby is about how the American dream is a fallacy, then Queens shows that there's an immeasurable cost to that dream.

“Being able to work on Great Gatsby, they’re in conversation with each other,” says Majok. “This pursuit of something that you can hold in your hands to prove the meaning of your life. And then you find out, ‘Oh no, it’s not enough.’ What do you do then? How do you make any sense of your little life? I’m starting to glimmer what the play was trying to tell me nearly a decade ago.”

Queens takes place in a post-9/11 New York in 2001, as well as in 2017—the year of the Muslim ban and the early years of the Russo-Ukrainian War. 2001 and 2017 were also years where American society was particularly hostile to immigrants. But that doesn't stop the women in the play from coming to America, working long hours, for low wages, in a country where they are seen as invisible. Any money they make is sent home to support their families. In one moving scene, which survived from 2018 to now, Isabela (played by Nicole Villamil, also from the 2018 production), picks up a shirt and says it costs $8: "That’s almost two hours working ... This whole room is like half year working. One half year of my daughter’s life that I’m not with her."

Notes Majok: "For women who have to do both, they're the holders of family and community, and they're also having to work with their finite bodies and finite time, just to get what they need to feel safe in the world." She then adds, with a dry chuckle. "Somebody asked me, during the first production, like, 'Why did you write them as women?' And I was like, because I like higher stakes, baby! There's more to lose."

Adds Malouf, passionately: "There are statues everywhere honoring the men that have raped and pillaged and built so many of the societies that we exist in. This [play] feels like an honoring of the women who, we don't know their names, we don't know their stories, but they are the reason we're here ... There's no way this play could be Kings."

While there are references to an "orange man" and the "crazy guy in Moscow," Queens isn't trying to be a didactic. The women in it aren't meant to send a message to the audience; they're human in a human story. Queens is hyper-focused on the inner lives of its characters, exploring their regrets and deep loneliness but also on the jokes they crack in order to make each other laugh, and their resiliency despite their harsh circumstances. 

As an actor who has been offered her fair share of tragic Middle Eastern characters, Malouf finds her character in Queens, an Afghan immigrant and poet named Aamani, refreshing. "This woman is not a victim, not someone who is defined by the trauma that she experiences. She is funny, she is smart, she has all these secrets and textures of her person. She has so many flaws. And it was exhilarating to read." She then adds, with a note of exasperation, "I'm exhausted portraying and watching work where we are defined because we're Muslim, because we're from this country or that country. We're people."

That seems like an obvious statement, but in today's political landscape, it's radical. Majok and Malouf admit that the news headlines weigh on them, and the play feels more emotional than it did eight years ago. As Malouf explains: "It feels different in that we've gone deeper into this terrifying abyss, and empathy feels like some sort of distant dream." To her, playing an immigrant who is afraid she will be deported for being Muslim feels even more visceral now. "The fear is real and not some idea that we're trying to imagine. We don't have to imagine anything. We're in it now. And these women and this play feel like a beacon that we're just fixed on and following." She then turns and takes Majok's hand. "Thank God for Martyna and her compass."

Majok smiles at her friend, then notes, with a hint of melancholy: "I don't know if it's useful for the world, but it's useful for me. Writing [for me] is horrendous, but the main reason to do it is to feel less alone. And the ways that the administration is just torching lives left and right is like." She pauses, grasping for the right words for the current indescribable situation, before saying, "So much of the play endeavors to be a hearth and a home for these stories and these people, and therefore myself ... The hope is for the play to make a number of people feel held, including the playwright, in these times."

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Photos: Queens at Manhattan Theatre Club

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