AN award-winning playwright’s new play examining neurodivergence and the state of mental health care is coming to Colchester next month.

‘Surfacing’ will be performed in a “smaller studio” in Colchester’s Mercury Theatre for one night only on May 4.  

Australian theatre writer Tom Powell wrote the play, before it was named as the ‘Evening Standard Pick of the Festival’ when it opened at the Vault Festival in 2023.

Tom also won the 2021 Papatango Prize – the biggest playwrighting award in the UK - for his play The Silence & the Noise, which toured nationally in 2021/22.

The play’s plot follows an NHS therapist called Luc, who is haunted by shape-shifting shadows, tormented mice, and secrets she thought she had buried.

The production will use new motion sensor technology to create responsive light and sound to evoke the lived experience of disassociation – an out-of-body experience where one thinks they or the world is not real.  

Dr Jasmine Martinez, NHS talking therapies consultant, and Dr Ruth Cooper, research consultant, are also part of the creative team.

The play will start at 6.30pm with tickets costing £12.50 which can be purchased here.

The play lasts about one hour and 15 minutes and under 18s must be accompanied by an adult.