Act of God
He can talk about almost anything. Just not her.
A young man from Wythenshawe has been sent on a ten week therapy via poetry course to work through something he would much rather leave alone.
He doesn’t like therapy. He definitely doesn’t like poetry. But he would like everyone to stop asking him how he feels.
Facing him, a therapist with one question: are you telling the truth or have you told this story so many times you now believe it?
So they talk. They play chess. He makes jokes, changes the subject and, once a week, brings in a poem.
The trouble is, the poems start getting harder to hide behind as he realises he’s “not f*cking Oscar Wilde”.
Act of God is the debut play from Manchester writer Jacob O’Connor, exploring masculinity, class and what happens when a man who can talk his way out of almost anything, suddenly can’t.
Rooted in the North, it follows a working-class young man who is very good at being funny and considerably less good at being vulnerable. He can talk about birds, football, chess, almost anything, as long as nobody gets too close to the thing he’s not saying.
Until, eventually, they do.
Funny, intimate and unsentimental, Act of God asks what happens when the ways you’ve learnt to cope stop working — and whether saying something sideways still counts as saying it at all.
And, importantly, it is very funny.
Written by Jacob O’Connor
Produced by Elissa Gerrand and WVFRM