A play about a friendship over 18 years has been almost the same amount of time in the making itself.

Hannah and Hanna in Dreamland builds on John Retallack’s award-winning play of 2001. It has been performed nationally and internationally and will now be playing in four Kent venues this autumn.

A story of friendship, migration and karaoke, it starts in the summer of 1999. Margate’s beaches are packed with day-trippers - and its hotels filled with Kosovan asylum seekers – including Hanna, who is played by Celia Meiras, a survivor of Europe’s most recent genocide.

Hannah - played by Lisa Payne - is from Margate, bored with life in the rundown seaside town, and hanging out with her boyfriend, Bull, and his prejudiced mates. The only things the two 16-year-olds have in common are their names and their love of singing along to their favourite pop songs.

Sixteen years later, Hanna returns to the town - this time in search of a Syrian girl she befriended in Kosovo and who may have succeeded in getting across the Channel. The Calais Jungle is close and attempts by its residents to reach England fill the local media.

Hanna hopes her young friend will be welcome in Margate, but although the town has changed, alongside the coffee bars and vintage shops, there is still an undercurrent of hostility towards the migrants and refugees who are so desperate to enter the UK.

Just as it did in 1999, when Hanna’s arrival turned Hannah’s life upside down, so her return takes the friends on a journey which Hannah from Margate would not have thought possible.

The new play is presented by UK Arts International, Lighthouse, Poole’s Centre for the Arts and the Marlowe in Canterbury in association with Theatre Royal Margate, Folkestone Quarterhouse and Looping the Loop - and gets its premiere in Kent.

Some of its challenging topics, including migration and integration, they will be explored through workshops with school and community groups, and statements taken from those sessions on how migration has impacted on their lives will be incorporated into a short film which will be screened at the end of some performances at each venue.

DETAILS

Hannah & Hanna in Dreamland will be at the Marlowe Studio in Canterbury from Thursday, October 4 to Saturday, October 6. For tickets, priced £13.75, visit marlowetheatre.com or call 01227 787787.

But it doesn’t stop there. It will be at the Woodville in Gravesend on Thursday, October 11 and the Quarterhouse in Folkestone on Friday, October 12.

It then heads out of the county to Portsmouth, Poole and Woolwich before returning to the Theatre Royal in Margate on Saturday, November 3 and Sunday, November 4.

The play is supported by Arts Council England and Kent County Council and is being put on by UK Arts International, with the Marlowe as co-producers. UK Arts focuses on work that is culturally diverse, attracts new audiences to theatre and deals with topics that are of contemporary relevance.