Class of 2026: Jacob Perkins connects counseling, storytelling, and recovery in off-Broadway play

Whether Jacob Perkins is stepping into a rehearsal room or counseling a client, his goals are the same — create community and help people put language to experiences that are hard to name.

Perkins is a master’s student in the Virginia Tech School of Education counselor education program who will graduate this month. Before starting his graduate studies at Virginia Tech, he spent 10 years in New York City as a playwright. He wrote his latest production, "The Dinosaurs," in 2020 with its off-Broadway run having come to an end in March. The play follows the Saturday Survivors, a weekly women’s Alcoholics Anonymous group as they work through recovery in an uncertain world.

Perkins’ work, both artistically and professionally, explores the convergence of LGBTQIA+ identities with religious and spiritual trauma, substance use, and existentialism.

His past theater career includes several off-Broadway plays, such as “The Gold Room” and “Home Church Play.” He was a winner of the 2020 Biennial Commission from Clubbed Thumb, the inaugural recipient of the DVRF/O’Henry Emerging Playwright Award, and is a graduate of several theater companies, including Page 73’s Summer Residency at Yale. He is also an alumnus of the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater BFA Actor Training Program.

From recovery to "The Dinosaurs"

Perkins’ idea for “The Dinosaurs” surfaced during early 2020 — a deeply personal and pivotal time in his life. He was in early recovery from alcoholism, isolated due to COVID-19, and in search of community. The relationships he built in recovery spaces across New York City had abruptly shifted online just months after he decided to become sober.

“[The meetings were] a lifesaver, and then everything suddenly changed,” he said.

Amidst the turmoil, Perkins was developing a new play in response to a commission prompt by a New York City-based theater company, Clubbed Thumb. The company asked playwrights to submit a proposal inspired by “The Decameron,” a 14th century collection of stories told during the Black Plague, the most fatal pandemic in human history. The parallels to his life and the play were hard to ignore.

“I thought it was a really interesting correlation to my own experience of recovery and this notion of plague and renaissance being felt internally while also the world was experiencing it,” said Perkins. “How does alcoholism mirror the COVID-19 pandemic, and how do stories told over time save people's lives or re-energize them in some way? To me, it felt like a very obvious parallel. That's where the play idea came from, this notion of being in recovery spaces, and storytelling being a life saver while there's a plague of some kind going on.”

His submission, “The Dinosaurs,” was selected. The play explores recovery, community, and how people make sense of both personal and shared crises. The production examines time as something fluid rather than linear, and follows the main characters as they reconnect across weeks, years, and decades.

Perkins came up with the name of the play and intentionally left it open to interpretation. According to the actresses behind the Saturday Survivors, the title portrays the idea of endurance. Both the characters and pre-historic dinosaurs symbolize everlasting experiences and connections that persist across time.

A turning point

In 2023, after three years of sobriety and continuing to develop the play through several workshops, Perkins was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

“I was about to have my first operation to get rid of the tumor and the affected lymph nodes, and the workshop [for “The Dinosaurs”] was happening simultaneously. I was just starting to feel really fed up with my life in New York and tired of chasing this artistic career that felt very often non-reciprocal,” said Perkins.

Three months after he had his surgery, Perkins decided it was time to leave New York. He moved in with his brother’s family in Lynchburg and originally planned to stay for about six months.

“I got here and just really landed into a groove that felt nourishing in a different way,” he said. “Around December of 2023, I applied to the Virginia Tech counseling program and ... in the process of writing out the application responses, it became very clear to me that the skill sets [acting and counseling] were very similar.” 

Bridging the rehearsal room and the counseling space

Perkin’s connection to storytelling began when he was introduced to theater as a child. He quickly recognized it as a space where the taboo could be explored more freely.

“As a kid, I was really aware of social dynamics that weren’t talked about,” he said. “Theater felt like a way to discuss them without getting in trouble.”

Perkins continues to invite that instinct of speaking the unspoken and creativity into his clinical work with students at Cook Counseling Center, where he is completing his counseling internship.

“The rehearsal process of making a play is very similar to the rehearsal process of clinical work,” he said. “It's helping someone take what they learn in that intimate space into their everyday life.”

For him, the worlds of theater and counseling are not separate paths, but parallel practices grounded in storytelling, empathy, and community.

“I was actually trying to do the same thing as a therapist that I was doing as an artist,” he said. “Creating community and putting language to experiences that are hard to name.”

As a student, Perkins has continued to bring his unique perspective to his academic career. In 2024, he was named an addictions counseling fellow for the National Board for Certified Counselors Foundation. 

Perkins said Harley Locklear, assistant professor in the counselor education program, helped him find the overlap between his creative work and research. Together, they published, "Deep in the Hollers: LGBTQ+ Narratives of Addiction and Recovery in Appalachia," in The Professional Counselor. Perkins also published "Living the Cycle: A Reflexive Autoethnography on Minority Stress, Substance Use, and Attachment Repair in LGBQ Relationships" in the Journal of Family Theory & Review.

His next act

After graduation, Perkins will begin his doctoral studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he plans to continue exploring the intersections of counseling, identity, and storytelling. He credits Alexis Isaac, a doctoral student in the counselor education program, for helping him see that he’s a researcher at heart.

“Alexis was one of the first people to point out how my skills as a playwright would translate well to qualitative research,” he said. “She also helped me see that the systemic inequalities with which I wrestle could be addressed via advocacy and research, that I could bring stories like mine to the forefront and present them to the professional literature in order to incite change.”

He also hopes to keep writing, with conversations underway about future projects, including a possible film adaptation of “The Dinosaurs.”

Long term, he envisions creating a community-centered space for queer and trans individuals that integrates clinical services with creative expression.

“I want there to be a space where people can access counseling and recovery support, but also create and share their work,” Perkins said. “How can your creative work inform the clinical experience you’re hoping to have and vice versa?”