In a hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, African-American college student Alice is waiting to meet her birth mother. From infancy, Alice was raised in New England by white bestselling memoirist Madeleine Holmes. In the same hotel, there’s a global botany symposium painstakingly organized by Professor Edgar Nunby. But the staff is on strike and half the rooms have busted plumbing. An eco-radical group called the Pangaea Liberation Front is mounting an Occupy Wall Street-style protest outside. Throw in a pot-dealing British-Pakistani concierge, a trigger-happy Chinese security guard and Madeleine herself—who shows up hell-bent on bringing Alice back home—and soon identities and agendas are clashing wildly. Otherland is a serious farce about roots, race, adoption and how you have to create your belonging.