As the new Chewing Gum Dreams play kicks off this autumn, the show’s actress and director give an exclusive preview on their modernised approach for the 2026 production.

Remember Chewing Gum? The Channel 4 TV show starring award-winning actress, screenwriter and director, Michaela Coel, aired on Channel 4 for two seasons from 2015-2017. The TV show was based on Coel’s one-woman show, Chewing Gum Dreams in 2012, her final-year show at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, originally at The Yard Theatre in association with the Bush Theatre in 2012.

Now, almost 15 years later, Michaela Coel has granted Theatre503 in Battersea the rights to produce Chewing Gum Dreams in co-production with British African-heritage theatre company tiata fahodzi. Coel has also approved BIFA-nominated actor Lauryn Ajufo for the main character, Tracey Gordon.

Speaking on Theatre503’s production of Chewing Gum Dreams, Coel said: “Theatre503 was one of the early supporters of Chewing Gum Dreams and praised the show greatly during its first run in 2012. It is wonderful to see it have its first UK return there and I’m excited for its opening. Wishing their team the best of luck!”

Ahead of the Chewing Gum Dreams theatre run this autumn (10 September 2026), Melan Magazine spoke exclusively to the show’s actress Lauryn Ajufo and its award-winning director Anthony Simpson-Pike, to learn how they’re bringing a fresh perspective to the well-loved character and what to expect from the production.

Sharing how this play differs from the original Chewing Gum Dreams play and subsequent TV show, director Anthony says: “I obviously loved the original Chewing Gum Dreams play and the TV series, but I have tried not to go back and rewatch it deliberately, just so that it feels like it’s our unique vision of what Tracey’s world looks like today.” He adds: “We’re not setting it [the play] in 2026. We’re keeping it in its time. The thing that makes it feel most ‘not today’ is the music, but apart from that, it feels like it could have been written today. The questions, themes, everything feels very relevant. In even deciding who we were going to cast, we really wanted to make sure that it was [someone] that was making it completely their own and coming up with their own version of Tracey.”

With Chewing Gum Dreams being a one-woman show, the team opted for a minimalist set design. Anthony explains: “There were maybe three props on set [the main being a chair]. We’ve built out a set design, which is trying to express Tracey’s inner world and hold a kind of liminal space between girlhood and becoming a young woman that can hold softness and more concrete, harsher textures at the same time. We started looking at images of playgrounds as well, in estates. I’ve come up with something that feels quite abstract, but holds both elements of childhood and adulthood, which feels like it is the core of the play.”

From Dreaming Whilst Black to Netflix’s Everything Now, 26-year-old Lauryn Ajufo has featured in several projects. Her versatility as an actress, range and youthful appearance, lend credibility to her playing 14-year-old Tracy in the play. The character Tracy was 24 in the TV series.

Sharing how Chewing Gum Dreams compares to other projects she has worked on, the actor says: “I think this is the most work I’ve had to do [in her career so far]. It definitely made me read and see things differently. I think there’s beauty in that. It resembles a project I did earlier in the year, John Proctor is the Villain. With the vulnerability of young women, the conversations we discuss and how we are perceived in society and putting our foot on the ground and owning the space.”

Chiming in on how he had Lauryn in mind for the main character of the theatre production, Anthony adds: “I actually saw John Proctor, and… I saw Lauryn. I [thought] she needs to come in for Chewing Gum Dreams, and then texted the casting director, and they [said] she’s already on the list.”

Speaking further on a particular scene in the play, Anthony says: “Tracey at one point talks about how she’s looking into Connor’s eyes, [her love interest], and she sees his dreams, and wants them. She starts thinking about the dreams that she had that she murdered, and the difference between what it is to be a white guy planning to go to university and the paths that people expect for Tracey. There’s something about every person having a universe inside them, and that being activated by what pathways and dreams they’re allowed to have.”

As a young Black woman herself, Lauryn explains how the adultification of Black girls is also explored in the play: “…how they have been taught to move on, and how this has a huge effect on all of us, and in the future to come. So hopefully, when people watch this, they see their younger selves and the conversation of the world they were exposed to as a kid that was deemed as normal. They [realise], ‘Oh, I don’t think that was okay. Or how do we perfect this moving forward in the future?’”

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In Chewing Gum Dreams, Tracey hasn’t really ventured past Enfield [in London]. Both Lauryn and Anthony share a favourite scene in the play exploring that.

Anthony said: “When Tracey goes to Margate she hasn’t ever seen the sea before, and she’s like, ‘This must be past Enfield’ because she hasn’t [really] been past there before. But it’s a really beautiful moment where she feels the most 14 [years old] in the whole play. She’s in awe of the sea and feels like crying, but not from sadness…She doesn’t [quite] know the words to put onto it. There’s a whole world out there that she hasn’t seen before that is potentially available to her. It feels like a really hopeful scene for me.”

Sharing why this is also her favourite scene, Lauryn says: “You see her vulnerability. It’s a sense of freedom. You watch her looking into the ocean, genuinely with such awe, and it’s also with someone who genuinely likes her. So, I think what [we are probably witnessing] is what she’s yearned for the whole play: acceptance, and she gets that.”

Sharing who Chewing Gum Dreams is for, and why people should watch this version of it, Lauryn says: “With Chewing Gum Dreams and Chewing Gum, there’s going to be a generation of people who grew up with it. It’ll be interesting to see their interpretation of what they watched when they were younger. It opens up a new conversation around girlhood, womanhood, who gets to dream, what does it mean to be a young Black girl living in London, class and race.”

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Director Anthony adds: “It still feels like a very fresh, radical and bold piece of work. Radical insofar as how many plays are out there that get into the mind of a young Black 14-year-old girl from East London, working class, dealing with what it means to be all of those things in the world right now? Let’s keep making space for stories like this. Stories that aren’t being told enough, even now.”

Chewing Gum Dreams written by Michaela Cole and directed by Anthony Simpson-Pike is showing at Theatre503 from 10 September to 3 October 2026.

Written by Maxine Harrison