UNRECONCILED Comes to the NY Irish Center This Month

 A captivating new play chronicling the journey of a clerical sexual abuse survivor from Philadelphia makes its New York premiere at The NY Irish Center, 1040 Jackson Avenue in Long Island City, for two nights, Wednesday and Thursday September 25 & 26 (both at 7pm).  Tickets are now on sale at www.newyorkirishcenter.org

Co-authored by Jay Sefton and Mark Basquill, “Unreconciled” stars Sefton in the true-story account of a 13-year-old boy cast to play Jesus in a school play by a parish priest who goes on to sexually abuse him.  Directed by Geraldine Hughes, “Unreconciled” had its European premiere in August at the legendary Féile an Phobail festival on Falls Road in West Belfast.  In July, the show had its American premiere at the Chester Theater Company where it enjoyed a two-week run.

Hughes, who assumed direction of the project as of the Belfast premiere, met Sefton in Los Angeles where he saw her riveting one-woman tour de force “Belfast Blues.” They had been friends for years and, after losing touch, Jay invited her to see a workshop of this show last year. “I was blown away when I saw it,” says Hughes.  “I knew right away I wanted to help him tell this story in any way I could.”

Playing 12 characters in all, Sefton leads us from the working-class Philadelphia suburbs of his youth, where his love of the theater began, all the way to his experiences as an adult navigating the turbulent waters of survivor justice and compensation. Terry McKiernan, the founder of the Massachusetts-based Bishop Accountability, called “Unreconciled “an extraordinary work of art.” Writing in the Daily Hampshire Gazette Steve Pfarrer called Sefton’s performance “one of the most amazing pieces of acting I’ve ever seen.”

Each of the two NY Irish Center performances will be followed by talkbacks with Hughes and Sefton.  They will be joined by David Clohessy (a victims advocate and former director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) on Wed Sept 25, and by Marci Hamilton, founder and CEO of Child USA, and a leading expert on child sex abuse statutes of limitation on Thur Sept 26.  Hamilton is the author of “Justice Denied,” and “God vs. the Gavel.”

Jay Sefton is an actor and mental health counselor based in Easthampton Massachusetts.  His regional acting credits include “What the Constitution Means to Me” (WAM Theater/Berkshire Theatre Group, and Capital Rep); “A Life in the Theatre,” and “Dark Rapture” (Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre) and King Lear with Theatricum Botanicum in Los Angeles.  He is the recipient of the LA Weekly Award for Best Solo Performance for his “The Most Mediocre Story Never Told.”

Geraldine Hughes’s three Broadway acting credits include “Jerusalem” (also on the West End), “Cyrano de Bergerac,” and “Translations.”  She’s appeared in numerous acclaimed Off-Broadway productions, including “Molly Sweeney” (Irish Rep), “Pumpgirl,” “Orson’s Shadow,” “The Cripple of Inishmaan” and “The Weir.”  Her major film credits include “Rocky Balboa,” “Gran Torino,” “Time Out of Mind” and “Killing Lincoln.” Her solo play “Belfast Blues,” which she wrote and performed in, has toured internationally, earning her a Drama Critics Circle Award, a Los Angeles Ovation Award, a Garland Award and a Drama League nomination for Outstanding Performance.

Co-author Mark Basquill was raised in South Philadelphia and is a clinical psychologist now based in Wilmington NC where he helps veterans heal from the wounds of war.  He has written two full-length plays about his own family’s unfinished struggles to heal from child clergy abuse. 

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