Confessions of a Mormon Boy
May. 18th, 2007 11:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidLast night I saw BTW's production of Confessions of a Mormon Boy, a solo show written and performed by Steven Fales, recovering Mormon boy, aka oxy-mormon, aka Mormon American Princess.
The show starts with a kid singing; it's a recording of him when he was five or so. He describes his childhood, his mission to Portugal, attending BYU and having his first homosexual encounter. Which he owns up to and asks the church for help; he still wants the "forever family" dream. Counseling and such, and he gets married, to the daughter of a man who was gay (and died of AIDS in the 80s). And he tries and tries to make it work. All kinds of therapy and counseling, but nothing helps. So in the end, they get divorced, and he's excommunicated, and leaves his kids and goes to NYC without enough money to live on... which is why he starts as an escort. Which earns money, lots of it, but he also spends lots, on clothes, on his apartment, on his kids, on drugs... And things spiral downward, until he finds his epiphany. And he's able to choose to leave behind the things he's ashamed of, and focus on the things that bring him joy, working in theater, being a dad, and so on.
The most frustrating part of this production was that the show in the space next to us had a lot of music, which was audible, especially during the more quiet moments of this show. Unfortunate. The lighting was effective, but also a bit predictable, with a lot of shifts warm to cool and back again as well as spotlights and more. Or maybe I just didn't like that I kept noticing the lighting, rather than it being a more subtle enhancement (except for the bar scenes, where it was appropriately noticeable).
I'm impressed with Fales' abilities; he's a versatile actor as well as a talented singer and writer. Also a very attractive body :-).
It takes guts to do a show like this, to reveal his flaws, missteps, and mistakes to whoever chooses to attend. Not only to the strangers in the audience*, but as he went along, he admitted his trespasses to his family, to his church. That's not easy to do, straight up and straightforward.
As with many one-person, writer-performer shows, I find it difficult to imagine it could be performed by anyone other than the writer, at an intersection between theater and performance art specific to one performer. I'm glad I got to see this.
* Not always strangers: he came out after the show and told us that his dad (who is not portrayed in the most flattering light at times in the play) came to opening night the first time the show was produced in New York. Also that it was his son's 12th birthday yesterday, and they'd talked before the show.
The show starts with a kid singing; it's a recording of him when he was five or so. He describes his childhood, his mission to Portugal, attending BYU and having his first homosexual encounter. Which he owns up to and asks the church for help; he still wants the "forever family" dream. Counseling and such, and he gets married, to the daughter of a man who was gay (and died of AIDS in the 80s). And he tries and tries to make it work. All kinds of therapy and counseling, but nothing helps. So in the end, they get divorced, and he's excommunicated, and leaves his kids and goes to NYC without enough money to live on... which is why he starts as an escort. Which earns money, lots of it, but he also spends lots, on clothes, on his apartment, on his kids, on drugs... And things spiral downward, until he finds his epiphany. And he's able to choose to leave behind the things he's ashamed of, and focus on the things that bring him joy, working in theater, being a dad, and so on.
The most frustrating part of this production was that the show in the space next to us had a lot of music, which was audible, especially during the more quiet moments of this show. Unfortunate. The lighting was effective, but also a bit predictable, with a lot of shifts warm to cool and back again as well as spotlights and more. Or maybe I just didn't like that I kept noticing the lighting, rather than it being a more subtle enhancement (except for the bar scenes, where it was appropriately noticeable).
I'm impressed with Fales' abilities; he's a versatile actor as well as a talented singer and writer. Also a very attractive body :-).
It takes guts to do a show like this, to reveal his flaws, missteps, and mistakes to whoever chooses to attend. Not only to the strangers in the audience*, but as he went along, he admitted his trespasses to his family, to his church. That's not easy to do, straight up and straightforward.
As with many one-person, writer-performer shows, I find it difficult to imagine it could be performed by anyone other than the writer, at an intersection between theater and performance art specific to one performer. I'm glad I got to see this.
* Not always strangers: he came out after the show and told us that his dad (who is not portrayed in the most flattering light at times in the play) came to opening night the first time the show was produced in New York. Also that it was his son's 12th birthday yesterday, and they'd talked before the show.