By SHARON EBERSON
This year marks 20 years since the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy abuse. It also marks 40 years since actor Jay Sefton went from carefree 13-year-old to abuse survivor, and sparked his autobiographical performance piece, Unreconciled.
“The title was the first thing I had, before anything else,” Sefton said by phone from Braddock, where his show will be presented by barebones productions January 31-February 16, 2025.
The Philadelphia native had gone through reconciliation and reparations programs for abuse victims, and “I came out of that program not reconciled.”
at barebones’ Braddock black box theater.
Sefton’s story of trauma begins when he is cast as Jesus in a school play, directed by a parish priest. He also chronicles his family life, playing multiple characters, in an 80-minute piece that at-times is a humorous exploration of a particular place and time, when Villanova men’s basketball team beat No. 1 seed Georgetown for the NCAA men’s basketball championship. The show evolves into Sefton unleashing the inner strength to publicly denounce the injustices heaped on childhood abuse victims.
Sefton’s director for the show, Geraldine Hughes, had just arrived at barebones’ Braddock black box theater when she, too, got on the phone to discuss the upcoming run of the show. Her name might be familiar from the movies Rocky Balboa and Grand Torino, and she also is known for her own acclaimed show, Belfast Blues, about growing up in the war-torn Belfast of the 1980s.
“Jay and myself have such a lovely friendship from years ago, and you can’t just be anybody, I don’t think, to come in and be in a room when someone’s telling this story and help them with it in whatever capacity,” Hughes said. “You have to have a lot of trust and understanding, and so it’s a privilege to be around it.”
“Geraldine and I met at a theater company where we were both members, and the reason that I ever thought to do a solo show was because of seeing Belfast Blues,” Sefton said.
The seeds of Unreconciled were first sown when, in a workshop where he had to offer three story ideas to talk about, he offered “the Villanova game, The Passion Play when he was 13, and a production of Waiting for Godot that I did where the director had died in a car accident just after we closed the show.”
The Penn State/Jerry Sandusky revelations and the report released by then state Attorney General Josh Shapiro further pushed the project forward. .
In 2019, he wrote an opinion piece for PennLive, titled: “They normalized a culture of child rape and then asked us to sign away our rights.” In 2021, TribLive published his oped, “Pa. lawmakers must stop denying justice to abuse victims.”]
“It was kind of this journey of watching the politicians in Pennsylvania team up with the Catholic church and their lobbying arm to sort of play games with survivors for the past 20 years,” Sefton explained. “Every grand jury report has the recommendation of a two-year window, and I watched that fall apart in 2021 when the state failed to advertise in all the newspapers, and the constitutional amendment fell apart. And that’s when I really started to think, maybe I’ll try and write another show and focus solely on this experience.”
Both Hughes and Sefton want it to be clear that the story has elements of humor and the hum of childhood experience in a close-knit neighborhood.
“The idea of 13 year olds dressed up and recreating The Passion Play always struck me as very funny to begin with … There was the other stuff that wasn’t so funny that was happening around it, but the premise of making apostle robes out of curtains and putting kids on a cross seemed absurd, and there was some natural humor in all of that. And I’m sort of in love with the place that I grew up in, as much as I couldn’t wait to get out of there and haven’t really returned ever to live there. I do love Delaware County and the Philadelphia suburbs.”
He added that he is thrilled about the Philadelphia Eagles winning, which could be forgiven, as this is his first time in Pittsburgh. Same for Hughes, who originally was introduced to barebones’ Patrick Jordan by mutual friend and actor David Whalen.
Hughes emphasized more than once that “there’s some fun to be had and some giggles to be had” in watching Sefton tell his story. “I don’t want people to think that, ‘I can’t sit through this.’ … In the particular way that Jay tells [his story], because of who Jay is and the kind of performer he is, you can’t help just to be floored by it.”
It’s a story that initially came from a place of rage – Sefton’s word – when the constitutional amendment to provide relief to survivors of childhood sexual abuse was stalled by a split legislature.
He said it was the encouragement from his wife and friends that kept him going, so that “the strange path forward from rage led into trust and loving the people around me.”
The piece, co-written with Mark Basquill, came in at well over two hours before it evolved into the 80 minutes that was called, “An extraordinary work of art on the impossible topic,” by Terry McKiernan, founder and president of Bishop Accountability.
During the run of the show, there will be talkbacks with local groups that support abuse victims (see below), which Sefton tries to do wherever the show is performed. That includes in Belfast, where it was performed in August of last year.
“I know people who were in the audience who are still talking about it,” Hughes said. “I think at the end of the play, you need a wee bit of time to process what you’ve seen. I mean, listen, I don’t want to paint this as a difficult thing from beginning to end. There’s childlike joy in this. There’s very funny things. But ultimately, the talkbacks have been wonderful, because you people have stood up and said, ‘I am also a survivor.’ And that’s very, very moving.”
She added that she hopes to take the show back to Ireland.
Before saying goodbye, Sefton wanted to add how much it means to him to be welcomed to the Braddock venue, in his home state.
“I worked fairly hard to try and get Philadelphia theaters interested in it, and nobody really bit on it. So I’m so grateful for Patrick and barebones and the city of Pittsburgh, because to be back in Pennsylvania with a story about the Pennsylvania General Assembly has been really important to me all along. And to be here, that’s really special to me, and I’m grateful to everyone that made this happen.”
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Unreconciled is presented by barebones productions, January 31 – February 16, 2025, at barebones black box theater, 1211 Braddock Avenue, Braddock. TICKETS: https://www.barebonesproductions.com/unreconciled. TALKBACKS:February 2: Join Sefton and Shaun Dougherty, executive director and board president of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), for a discussion after the Sunday matinee. February 9: Post-show moderated talkback featuring Sefton, members of PAAR and Natalie Bencivenga after the matinee (a portion of proceeds from this performance benefit PAAR).
Categories: Our Posts, Show Previews, Venue
Leave a Reply Cancel reply