When Michaela Coel saw Maia Novi’s hit off-broadway play, she asked the writer and star what novel she had based her work off of. But Invasive Species — now playing at the King’s Head Theatre in Islington — is very much based on a true story. Novi’s true story.
In 2022, Novi was in her final year of drama school at Yale when she developed insomnia from stress. But when she sought medical help, she was given a sleeping pill and woke up in a psychiatric ward for young people. It was almost three weeks before she could convince them of her sanity and be released. Journaling kept her sane, and she transformed her diary entries into a dark comedy she describes to me as “Evita, but set in a psych ward”.
