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How do you explain the Archers to New Yorkers?

My new play is being staged in New York and my job has been to act as a cultural translator for the actors ...

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If I can make it there ... Not all English customs cross the Atlantic with ease. Photograph: Corbis

About two years ago I wrote a play called Tell Out My Soul, while on the Soho Theatre Core Writers' Programme. Just when I was thinking it would never get produced, I got a call in March asking if it could open the Summer Plays Festival in New York on July 1st. Once I had stopped jumping up and down, I said yes.

The SPF promotes emerging writers. Eight shows get a two-week rehearsal process and a week's run at the prestigious Public Theatre. There is a tradition of presenting international playwrights, but the entire team, director, cast and crew are New York-based. I get to be in NYC for the full three weeks.

I get a rush of acrophobia as I open the blinds in my hotel room. Floor 37. Welcome to New York.

I am barely in the city 12 hours before I am in rehearsals. Meeting the cast and crew for the first time is terrifying. I get the distinct impression they are expecting me to be very, very clever. The accent isn't helping. I stay uncharacteristically quiet in the hope I can pull off enigmatic.

The getting-to-know-you chat is held over a vat of Starbucks. I anticipated this and with some flourish, present the tea and biscuits I brought from England (complete with teapot and strainer) as a gift to the rehearsal room. Not sure about clever or enigmatic, but the pink spots on the teapot definitely seal eccentric. They have to like me. Or I'm taking back the chocolate Hob Nobs.

During the read through it dawns on me that their initial questions are not going to be about philosophy of religion, the Church of England, characters - ie the play - but in fact some urgent explanation is needed for some very specific cultural references: Just a Minute and the Archers (Radio 4 in general comes up a lot), John Simpson, Bendy Buses and Waitrose? I feel like I'm from Mars.

I'm still struggling to explain Radio 4. I have never really been interested in the specifics of the American media - prescribing to that general English snobbery that ours is better. To compound matters, no one in the rehearsal room apart from me really listens to the radio at all. How do you explain John Humphrys to someone who is used to Fox News?

My instinctive reaction is to play everyone some Radio 4 online and we download an episode of the Archers. Just before play is pressed I realise this is a huge mistake. But it's started. That theme tune. It's too late. In the faces of wide-eyed disbelief around me I see that there is nothing Alexander McQueen, the Beatles, Duffy, Kate Moss can do now. Cool Britannia and my attempt to convert America to the Today programme are over with one easy click of the mouse.

Cultural atrocities aside, once we begin talking about the play, the rehearsal room feels like home - same issues, same questions, same solutions for the most part. I'm surprised at lunchtime to come outside and find the traffic going the wrong way.

Although, in the afternoon we discover that the cultural specificity of pancakes is the key to unlocking one scene. In a moment of intense awkwardness, Tom (60-year-old university lecturer), offers to make Ev (19-year-old runaway who has just stayed the night) breakfast. Pancakes seemed to me the most impractical, messy, overblown gesture that he could make. No one really knows how to make them, flour gets everywhere, the mixture is always wrong, they set the smoke alarm off, the first one is always a disaster and the rest get stuck to the bottom of the pan even if you don't try to toss them. Shrove Tuesday is an event printed in desk diaries as testament to all this fuss. Apparently, putting a thick slab of rubbery dough into the microwave doesn't carry the same levels of trauma.

In the absence of a voice coach they also ask me to correct their accents, which I can't do without feeling pompous. Except for correcting semi (sem-eye) and anti (ant-eye), which actually gives me a huge sense of satisfaction.

Midway through day two I'm thinking that theatre is one big happy global family that has opened its arms to me across the Atlantic. Until I realise the girls are giggling at me as I am standing by the Starbucks, hugging the tea pot.

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