Raw Gods, a rap and drill musical by Hartley Lloyd Pack developed with young people from Hackney's care system, gets its first live outing as a one-night concert at Hoxton Hall on 2 December 2026.
Raw Gods plays its first live performance at Hoxton Hall on 2 December 2026, at 7pm. The new musical by Hartley Lloyd Pack tells its story in rap, hip hop, drill, grime and gospel, and this one-night concert showcase is the next step in its development.
At its centre are Sammy and Jay, two teenagers who have grown up together in care and count on each other above everyone else. When social services move them to placements hundreds of miles outside London, the pair run: from the system, from the police, from their social workers and from the labels that have followed them since childhood. Music, as far as they are concerned, is the way out.
Dia Peters plays Sammy, with the rapper JayaHadADream as Jay and Nkechi Simms as Chantelle. JayaHadADream, a Jamaican-Irish artist from Cambridge, is nominated for Grime Artist of the Year at the 2026 MOBO Awards and won Glastonbury's Emerging Talent Competition in 2024. Simms is known from Top Boy on Netflix and the BBC Three series PRU. Peters, a Mountview graduate, has stage credits including Boyhood at the Pleasance Theatre. Live musicians and a choir of six care leavers complete the line-up.
Lloyd Pack, son of the late Only Fools and Horses actor Roger Lloyd Pack, has worked in Hackney Children and Young People's Services since 2014, and the musical grew out of that job. It was shaped with Hackney care leavers and young people still in the system, and he brings his own background as a poet and rapper to the writing.
The score was produced with Richard Day, Jamie Rodigan and Adiktive. Olivier Award winner Matthew Xia has consulted on the piece, and Cardboard Citizens artistic director Chris Sonnex is its dramaturg. The concert is directed by Basheba 'Bashiie' Baptiste, a care leaver who runs the theatre charity Care to Culture. Takisha Sargent is musical director, Amanda Pefkou movement director, Duramaney Kamara sound designer and Gerel Falconer rap consultant. SH Productions produces.
Lloyd Pack said: "Through my work with young people in Hackney, I’ve seen how much humour, creativity and determination can exist alongside incredibly difficult circumstances. I wanted to write something that makes room for all of that. Sammy and Jay have dreams, they make mistakes, and they have a friendship that means everything to them. Music is where they can say what they really feel and imagine a different future. Developing RAW GODS with care leavers and young people in care has been essential to finding that voice."
The story first reached audiences on screen. Fully Focused Productions made a short musical film of it in 2022 with its young film trainees and the children in care Lloyd Pack works with, and the late poet Benjamin Zephaniah lent it his support. A television version is in development with Fully Focused and the BBC. The film is below, or watch it on YouTube.
Tickets for the concert at Hoxton Hall, 130 Hoxton Street, London N1 6SH, start at £22.50 including the booking fee.
For more information, visit the official website.
