About the Play:

Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female/Male Scenes.

Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train is a full-length drama by Stephen Adly Guirgis who has been hailed as one of the most promising playwrights at work in America today. Set in New York's notorious Rikers Island jail, a youth accused of shooting the leader of a religious cult has colourful arguments about legal and divine justice with a serial killer who has found God.

Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train is the play that put its author, and his theater company, on the map. Angel Cruz is a thirty-year-old bike messenger from New York City who has lost his best friend to a religious cult. At the opening of the play, he is in his second night of incarceration, awaiting trial for shooting the leader of that cult in the "ass." He is on his knees, alone and terrified, trying to say a prayer he no longer remembers to a God he has all but forgotten. Angel's public defender is Mary Jane Hanrahan, still relatively young but very nearly disillusioned. At their first meeting, she mistakes Angel for another case. Wounded by her pride and Angel's sharp attacks, she mangles this initial interview and walks out. A crisis of conscience and an unresolved connection to her childhood brings her back, and Angel's heartfelt, persuasive arguments against the cult leader persuade her to champion his cause. By this time, the cult leader, Reverend Kim, has died on the operating table, and the charge against Angel is now murder. Angel has been beaten regularly by other inmates and is discovered in his cell barely conscious with a bed sheet tied around his neck. He is transferred to a special twenty-three-hour lockdown wing of protective custody. His jailer is Valdez, a brutally direct prison guard who believes in a world of black and white only. No grey areas permitted. Valdez has taken the post of Charlie D'amico, a guard Angel never meets. For one hour a day, Angel experiences daylight from a cage on the Riker's Island Prison roof. His only source of human contact is the lone inmate who is also in protective custody. Lucius Jenkins, a.k.a. "the Black Plague," works out furiously in the cage next to Angel. A sociopathic serial killer awaiting extradition to Florida, Lucius pauses from his workouts only to chain smoke and to "save" Angel. Lucius Jenkins has found God, and Angel's life and the course of his trial will be changed forever.

Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train premiered in 2000 at East 13th Street Theater by Off-Broaday's LAByrinth Theatre Company. The play received its international debut in 2001 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, winning a prestigious "Fringe First Award". The production then moved to London's Donmar Warehouse in 2002, before transferring to The Arts Theatre in the West End, where it was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best New Play. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 1 female, 4 male

What people say:

"…fire-breathing…[a] probing, intense portrait of lives behind bars…whenever it appears that [the play] is settling into familiar territory, it slides right beneath expectations into another, fresher direction. It has the courage of its intellectual restlessness…[Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train] has been written in flame." — The New York Times

"Jesus Hopped the A Train is a funny, powerful, adrenaline-fueled drama of good and evil, penalty and redemption written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, one of America's most exciting and admired writers." — Backstage

"Its aggressive high-octane style is like a shot of caffeine straight in the veins." —The Guardian

"Stunningly well-written … It is impossible to praise the electrifying performances in Philip Seymour Hoffman's remorselessly intense production too highly ... The theatrical event of the year." —The Daily Telegraph

About the Playwright:

Stephen Adly Guirgis is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. Born and raised in New York City by an Irish-American mother and Egyptian father, he studied theatre at the State University of New York in Albany before being recruited by John Ortiz and Philip Seymour Hoffman to join New York City's non-profit LAByrinth Theater Company, of which he later became a co-artistic director. His screenwriting credits have included TV shows such as NYPD Blue and The Sopranos, and his play Between Riverside and Crazy won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.