Unreconciled
Wednesday 21 October 2026
- Duration: 75 mins show + 30 mins post show panel
Suitable for age 16+
Trigger Warning: References to smoking and drinking, and clerical sexual abuse of minors.
| Wednesday 21 October
8pm |
Book Now |
Accessible / wheelchair seats must be booked through Box Office on 01 272 4030.
This performance will be followed by a 30 min post-show panel discussion.
Galvanizing audiences nationally and internationally, UNRECONCILED is a solo tour de force of daring to stand up to an institution that wants nothing more than silence.
Thirteen-year-old Jay Sefton dreamed of being an actor and was cast as Jesus in a school play directed by the parish priest — later defrocked and named in a grand jury report for sexual abuse of minors.Told with unflinching honesty and surprising humor, Sefton exposes the wider system that denies justice to survivors, taking audiences on a magic carpet ride through love and bewilderment in a whiskey-drenched, sports-crazed suburb of 1980s Philadelphia, where daily life is punctuated by church bells.
Hailed by critics and audiences, UNRECONCILED is the winner of the Berkshire Theatre Critics Association Award for Best New Play and Best Solo Performance, and Sefton has received numerous honors, including the Sean P. McIlmail Hero Award from CHILD USA. Mass Live called UNRECONCILED’s debut “The play to gain Chester Theatre and Sefton well-deserved national attention, whether it goes to Broadway, other regional theaters or to film. It’s just that good.” A feature-length documentary film of the UNRECONCILED journey is in production.
‘UNRECONCILED will make you laugh, think, cry and seethe: Theater at its finest... This is no lugubrious 80 minutes; Sefton's Philly roots won't allow it. His sharp-elbowed humor makes the plot rather rollicking.’
National Catholic Reporter
‘As the show unfurls, Sefton’s transformations dazzle, and the pacing of the production is as precisely mapped as the best poetry’
America: The Jesuit Review
‘A genuine, raw, honest, and intimate portrayal. One must see it to understand the power of characterization and the finesse of storytelling’
Discover Hollywood
‘Sefton is a masterful performer. . . [an] impactful, stirring, and unforgettable performance.’
Pittsburgh Tatler
‘Sefton holds his audience spellbound’
The Enterprise News of Cape Cod
‘Sefton’s story is compelling not only in content but also in presentation. For one thing, his acting is top notch’
Stage Raw
‘To say I laughed and cried is to not do the Unreconciled experience justice’
onStage Pittsburgh
Jay Sefton
Jay Sefton [he/him] (Playwright/Performer) is an actor and licensed mental health counsellor, originally from Philadelphia, and currently based in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Selected theatre credits include: Unreconciled (Writer/Performer, Chester Theatre Company), What the Constitution Means to Me (WAM Theatre/Berkshire Theatre Group and Capital Rep, Albany), Honor Killing, Paradise (WAM Theatre, Fresh Takes Reading Series), A Moon for the Misbegotten, The Lady Slipper, Million Dollar Quartet, Outside Mullingar (The Majestic Theater), Two Rooms (Silverthorne Theatre Company), The Most Mediocre Story Never Told (Writer/Performer), A Life in the Theatre, Dark Rapture (Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre), King Lear (Theatricum Botanicum, Los Angeles). Film/TV: The Wire, Grey’s Anatomy, The Shield, Summerland, Providence. He is a member of Actors’ Equity and SAG-AFTRA. Jay is the recipient of the LA WEEKLY Award for Best Solo Performance for The Most Mediocre Story Never Told, and the winner of the Berkshire Theatre Critics Association Award for Outstanding Solo Performance for Unreconciled, which also won Outstanding World Premiere of a New Play in 2024. He is the Executive Director of The Unreconciled Project and was honored by SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) for his work with survivors in Pennsylvania, and by CHILD USA with the Sean P. McIlmail Hero Award in 2025.
