I just spoke with one of "the 14."
I didn't even know what that meant until last night, while I was doing some research online for an interview scheduled for this morning with UI Theatre Department's head of acting, John Cameron.
John has written a play titled, "14," about 14 gay students at Brigham Young University in the mid-1970s who were subjected to electroshock treatments -- so called "reparative therapy" experiments -- in an effort to "cure" them of their "homosexual condition."
Although BYU's Mormon leaders have denied that this kind of experimentation ever took place, John knows that the barbaric treatment indeed occurred. Because it happened to him.
I was actually interviewing him for a completely unrelated feature I'm writing, profiling the UI Theatre's undergrad program, for a national theatre magazine. But I couldn't help asking a few questions about his new play -- which opens Jan. 31 on the UI main stage -- and how it felt to put himself and his trauma out there for all to see. After five years of writing it, he said, he'd distanced himself enough from the main character to be objective. When his actors tried to put too much sentimentality into the roles, he called them on their "sappiness" and snapped them back to a more biting, edgy, at times humorous portrayal.
I also spent a couple minutes commiserating with him about life in Utah, where I told him I'd lived for more than four years. He paused, then noted cautiously and somewhat diplomatically that it's both an "interesting place" and "beautiful." I had to laugh. How many of you out there have heard that exact response from me when you asked how I liked living in Utah? It's sort of the polite non-answer, like what we all really want to yell is, "It's oppressive and right-wing and controlled by a cult, and like selling your left leg to an octopus to get a goddamn drink!"
When I told John I was excited to see his new work, he warned me: "It's a little in-your-face."
That line was what prompted me to tell him I'd lived in Utah. I understood in-your-face. Nothing says in-your-face like some of those pious, door-knocking, funny undie-wearing, black-hating, gay-bashing, submissive-women-promoting, historically Polygamous Mormons who have what I once heard someone call "a casual relationship with the truth."
I'm glad he's giving a little back.
I didn't even know what that meant until last night, while I was doing some research online for an interview scheduled for this morning with UI Theatre Department's head of acting, John Cameron.
John has written a play titled, "14," about 14 gay students at Brigham Young University in the mid-1970s who were subjected to electroshock treatments -- so called "reparative therapy" experiments -- in an effort to "cure" them of their "homosexual condition."
Although BYU's Mormon leaders have denied that this kind of experimentation ever took place, John knows that the barbaric treatment indeed occurred. Because it happened to him.
I was actually interviewing him for a completely unrelated feature I'm writing, profiling the UI Theatre's undergrad program, for a national theatre magazine. But I couldn't help asking a few questions about his new play -- which opens Jan. 31 on the UI main stage -- and how it felt to put himself and his trauma out there for all to see. After five years of writing it, he said, he'd distanced himself enough from the main character to be objective. When his actors tried to put too much sentimentality into the roles, he called them on their "sappiness" and snapped them back to a more biting, edgy, at times humorous portrayal.
I also spent a couple minutes commiserating with him about life in Utah, where I told him I'd lived for more than four years. He paused, then noted cautiously and somewhat diplomatically that it's both an "interesting place" and "beautiful." I had to laugh. How many of you out there have heard that exact response from me when you asked how I liked living in Utah? It's sort of the polite non-answer, like what we all really want to yell is, "It's oppressive and right-wing and controlled by a cult, and like selling your left leg to an octopus to get a goddamn drink!"
When I told John I was excited to see his new work, he warned me: "It's a little in-your-face."
That line was what prompted me to tell him I'd lived in Utah. I understood in-your-face. Nothing says in-your-face like some of those pious, door-knocking, funny undie-wearing, black-hating, gay-bashing, submissive-women-promoting, historically Polygamous Mormons who have what I once heard someone call "a casual relationship with the truth."
I'm glad he's giving a little back.
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