ACT OF GOD Will Open at Riverside Studios in November

Act of God will come to Riverside Studios this year. Written by and starring Jacob O'Connor and directed by Sean Turner, performances will run 9 – 26 November.

Exploring masculinity, mental health and class, Act of God is a darkly comedic debut play from writer and actor Jacob O'Connor. With a background as a 12-time World Champion Kickboxer in his childhood, Jacob O'Connor draws on his own experiences growing up working class in Manchester, weaving the poetry he now writes into the script. Act of God follows quick-witted Jack as he's sent on a ten-week therapy-via-poetry course. Reluctant to engage, he is determined to get through without admitting how he feels, but facing him is a therapist with one deceptively simple question: are you telling the truth, or have you told this story so many times you now believe it? As they talk, play chess and spar over the poems he brings each week, the changing of the subject begins to crack, forcing him to confront the one thing he can't quite talk his way out of. Rooted in the North and exploring the complicated ways we learn to cope, Act of God asks what happens when those coping mechanisms stop working, and whether saying something sideways still counts as saying it at all.

Writer and performer Jacob O'Connor said, “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.”