‘Love can fester in both the purest of sparks and yet to decay hearts’
The emerging theatre company Cunning Moss Productions is proud to present a new dark dripped poetic piece for this spooky season with “Kiss in After-Plague”, which is making its full performed debut as part of GrimFest 2026 at Drayton Arms Theatre this coming October Sunday 25th & Monday 26th at 7:30pm.
The play follows Affliction and Pestilence who are running amok across the land, with bodies piling up quicker than the departure of their last exhaled breath. Amongst them hill dead fleshes, a dark aged romance stirs between Corvin, a body collector, and Mortalia, a holy man’s daughter. Narrated and debated in the exchange of dangerous curiosity on deprived lusted touches, as the world falls apart around them. Whilst tensions stir on what distance can stop a kiss of delicate love to blossom in such grim circumstances.
This gothic verse play provides a new modern fable reflection on the exchanges of consent and the passages of decay that plant bright futures or broken states under the restrictions and unsteadiness of the black plague. This expands on emerging playwright Anayis N. Der Hakopian’s original and heightened lyrical language through a combination of movement and exchanged voices. Presented with a talented cast and crew that focuses on the rooted knowledge and clear consciousness in the borders found within the dark fantastical genre, in both talking crows and ill embodied status.
Note the play contains references and embodiments of death, bodily decay, material abuse and thematics of necrophilia. Providing a night with some unsettled fright and tinged shadowy questions, set in a landscape that is suffered with grief, loss and exchanges of hopeful touch.
Anayis’ writing has been referred to as “a kind of language legend…I love people loving language at this level, you do not expect to come across this style with such young creatives” and that “The poetry itself opens up this entirely new world, that you can step into and play with. Such a magical realm that takes you to new places, that maybe you wouldn’t have thought of it if it was written in a conventional language” (Audience and Actor Feedback from R&D’s 2025)
Tickets are now on sale, do join us for an evening of festering love and consensual thought in poetic hum! For ticket/press enquiries contact us directly at cunningmossproductions@gmail.com
Kiss in After-Plague
Sunday 25th & Monday 26th
@ 7:30pm Drayton Arms Theatre
Box Office: 020 7835 2301
https://www.thedraytonarmstheatre.co.uk/kiss-in-after-plague