Passing on

YOUR FAMILY.    FOREVER PART OF YOUR D.N.A

Brian and Tom, together for ten years, would like to have a child, to be as Tom says, ‘a proper family with two dads‘.  When their friend, Jane, agrees to act as a surrogate, it seems they can really have it all. But after Tom is very reluctantly pressed into finding out about his biological parents, what he discovers will turn their dream of a family into their worst nightmare, threatening to destroy everything they have.

‘Passing On’, is a gripping new play by Sean Denyer, a graduate  of Manchester University’s Medical School, and was recently shortlisted for Best New play at Brighton Fringe.  It is being producing by Acting Out and Blue Heart Theatre. Acting Out, Dublin’s LGBT theatre group recently won the 2017 National GALA Award for Irish Arts and Literature. It is the companies first visit to Manchester

Writer Sean Denyer, who is also a Consultant in Public Health Medicine said, ‘Now gay couples can, thankfully, have most of the same choices as anyone else in terms of family formation, I wanted to explore this in the context of the rapidly advancing developments in genetics and screening. We can now find out more and more about our genetic make-up, but is this necessarily always a good thing? More and more people create their own ‘family’, but are there things about our biological families that we just can’t escape from?’

Featuring a talented cast of Irish actors, this gripping and thought-provoking play will stimulate a lot of debate for audiences about genetics, ethics, surrogacy and the impact of nature and nurture. It places this in the context of a powerful and insightful examination of a close and loving relationship, tested to the limit by discoveries from the past.

Written by by SEAN DENYER

Published: 12-Jul-2018: (4971)