Writer and actor Jacob O'Connor brings his first play, Act of God, to the Riverside Studios this November, with a reluctant young man sent on a ten-week therapy-via-poetry course.
Act of God opens at the Riverside Studios on 9 November and runs until 26 November. It is the debut play of Jacob O'Connor, who wrote it and performs in it, and it is directed by Sean Turner. Elissa Gerrand and WVFRM present, and further casting is still to be announced.
The hour-long play follows Jack, a quick-witted young man sent on a ten-week course that uses poetry as therapy. He turns up with no intention of engaging. Facing him is a therapist with one deceptively simple question: is he telling the truth, or has he told this story so often that he now believes it? Over chess games and the poems he brings each week, the deflections start to give.
O'Connor writes from his own ground. He grew up working class in Manchester and trained as a kickboxer from the age of three, taking 12 World Titles, one European Title and 31 British Titles as a child. The poetry he writes now is folded into the script, and the play asks what happens when the ways we learn to cope stop working.
It is his first play and his first role on a London stage. On screen he has appeared in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning and in the short films Hitmen and Life of the Party.
Jacob O'Connor said of the play:
"Act of God lives in the gap between the truth and the version we tell ourselves when it is too tough to swallow. It follows a man from Wythenshawe who has spent years telling himself a story he can live with, until a therapist finds the one thing to get past his world-class verbal footwork: poetry. Every poem drags him back into a memory that won't hold still, and every session becomes a game of chess between them. It's about the guilt and pride men carry and never put down, and the silence between two people who both know the game being played. I spent years in a ring where the first rule is never let them see you're hurt. This play exposes what happens when that rule is broken."
Act of God runs at the Riverside Studios, 101 Queen Caroline Street, London W6 9BN. Performances are on 9-10, 15-19 and 24-26 November at 7:15pm, and press night is Tuesday 10 November at 7:15pm. Tickets are £17, with concessions at £14. The running time is 60 minutes and the play is recommended for ages 15 and over.
