An upset 15-year-old calls her mother late one night. Not too unusual in any family until you learn that mother and daughter have been estranged both physically and emotionally for eight years after the mom lost her in a custody battle.

Impulsively, the two decide to take a cross country road trip together — risky for the mother since she doesn't have custody and what she's doing is technically illegal — but she wants to help her daughter. The mom is Cuban-American with brown skin, her daughter white and Jewish with little knowledge of her maternal heritage.

This 90-minute play 26 Miles by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Quiara Alegria Hudes (In the Heights, The Elliot Trilogy, Water by the Spoonful) starts this week in a regional premiere at Main Street Theater. In it, Rosarito Rodríguez-González (Alicia in Wonderland and Sin Muros Festival, both at Stages) plays the mom Beatriz. Despite the somewhat heavy subject matter, it's described as "frenetic, hilarious and powerful."

"I felt the part was mine as soon as I read it," said Rodríguez-González. "I have an 11-year-old daughter and I know it's going to be very challenging in the upcoming years. I connect on an emotional level as a mother, as the mother of a young child,  as a divorced parent thinking about the what ifs, thinking about what that relationship will be like in the future. The   the challenges of a teenager. The relationship between divorced parents. All of that."

And of course, because the part she plays is a Latina character. "Beatriz was born in Cuba; I was born in Puerto Rico.  So I was very excited there was a part for a character who looked like me physically."

Asked to describe that character, she says: "Beatriz is a complicated woman. She has been an undocumented immigrant. She arrived in Philadelphia  when she was 12 years old from Cuba after a horrible flood that destroyed her family's farm and met her daughter's father, fell  in love and was with him for many years and that relationship fizzled."

The play is set in the 1980s, begins in Philadelphia and ends in Wyoming. "Her daughter was taken away. She's been struggling with guilt for not being a present parent. She's been struggling with her own demons and really she runs on hope and faith. The hope that some day that relationship will be restored."

The playwright's own story is similar to the one she's created with this play, Rodríguez-González said. Hudes had a white father and Latina mother who divorced. She is from Philadelphia. "Her stepmother was an evil witch. So there's a lot of her story in this play," Rodriguez-Gonzales said.

Rodriguez-Gonzales is a theater professor at Texas Southern University who is also working on her Ph.D. at the University of Houston in the Hispanic program. The cast also includes Joy Germany as the daughter Olivia, Dwight Clark and Anthony Hernandez are in the one-act. Amelia Rico directs.

One of the challenges Rico worked to overcome, according to Rodríguez-González, is that two people in a car talking could play out in a pretty static way. 

"There are many scenes that take place in the car. But because there's a combination of the spiritual world and fantasy sequences the two step out of the car to have their conversations," Rodríguez-González said. Flashbacks are intertwined with the road trip itself. And the hood of the car is turned in different directions.

"The staging is very dynamic. There's a lot going on. The locations on this this road trip — the women stop at different motels. There's each family's house. And then there's the car. It's high energy. It's over before you know it."

Performances are scheduled for February 10 through March 3 at 7:30 p.m.  Thursdays through Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays at Main Street Theater - Rice Village, 2540 Times Boulevard. For more information, call 713-524-6706 or visit mainstreettheater.com. $35-$59.