THE MORMON BOY IS
fter premiering Confessions of a Mormon Boy off-Broadway in 2006, Steven Fales has toured his award-winning solo play
to critical acclaim in every major city in America and internationally. Following his recent West End debut, the U.K.’s Gay Times dubbed him “the gayest Mormon in the world.” And it would seem that he’s just warming up, as he now brings his entire Mormon Boy Trilogy to Los Angeles for its out-of-town pre Off- Broadway run this spring. Yes, the story continues with a prequel and a sequel
to Confessions, which is now Part I in the Mormon Boy Trilogy. “Each of the three solo plays in the trilogy has something personally dangerous for me to reveal,” says Fales. “In Confessions I discuss reparative therapy in the ex-gay movement and my excommunication in Utah and then forays into sex work and crystal meth addiction in Manhattan, but in the other two we go much further. If you think Confessions was honest, just wait.” It’s hard to believe that one man could reveal more
than that, but Steven Fales is no ordinary man. And though we all have a story to tell, Fales has enough stories for three lifetimes. Maybe that’s why he felt he needed to write three solo plays to forge a trilogy. In Part II, Missionary Position, first premiered at the
DISCUSSES THE MORMON BOY TRILOGY by william e. kelly
STEVEN FALES
18 RAGE RAGE monthly | APRIL 2012 monthly | APRIL 2012
Celebration Theatre in 2009 (before The Book of Mor- mon on Broadway), Steven recounts his experiences as a Mormon missionary, going from his freshman year at the Boston Conservatory to his mission to Portugal and then realizing as a transfer student to BYU that all the work in the Lord’s service did not make him straight. “The dangerous thing I do at the end of Missionary
Position is to reveal the secret/sacred temple rituals. I wear the green fig leaf aprons borrowed from free masonry in the whole ‘Rocky Mormon Picture Show.’ I’ve had family members disown me because of this, but it is in these rituals that the seeds of the entire Prop. 8 debacle started and persist.” Steven Fales puts his life on the line. He swore never
to divulge these secrets. He does so, however, with an uncompromising generosity of spirit. “The play, ultimately, is about reclaiming spirituality in the face of spiritual abuse and religious violence. Many of us have post-traumatic spiritual disorder. At the end of Missionary Position I say that I don’t have a problem with organized religion. It’s distorted religion that is the problem.” Steven Fales was baptized and confirmed Episco-
palian in 2008. Quite a turn around for someone who threw the baby out with the bathwater. Perhaps this
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