This is a special episode exploring another of Carol Lynn Pearson’s many talents, her playwriting, focusing this time on her advocacy work for LGBT+ persons. This discussion features LDF host Dan Wotherspoon along with three persons involved with a new production of CLP’s play, Facing East, which is being staged in Salt Lake City in October, twenty years after it first premiered. Joining Dan are director Jerry Rapier, and actors Jay Perry and Kristy Summerhays who play a grieving father (Alex) and mother (Ruth) whose gay son (Andrew) has recently suicided because of conflicts between who he is and how it clashes with his Mormon beliefs.
The play takes place in the cemetery immediately following Andrew’s funeral and reveals how two faithful Latter-day Saints deal in different ways with this tragic event. Alex is questioning everything about LDS teachings regarding homosexuality and how they kept him from really knowing their son. Ruth still can’t face the reality that her son couldn’t change who he is because God would never let church leaders be wrong about something so important, hence she double-downs on that belief even as it contradicts with the son she knew and loved so much. After they talk awhile, Andrew’s partner, Marcus, arrives at the burial site to grieve, thinking everyone would have already left. Ruth does, but soon Alex and Marcus have a difficult but searching conversation and then promise to continue to talk over lunch another time.
A special treat in the episode is when Jay and Kristy read two excerpts from scenes in the play. You don’t want to miss that! And neither do you want to miss the many beautiful experiences they all share about Carol Lynn as well as a great deal about the journey from a much-too-long script to its triumphant 2006 run in Utah, as well as in other stagings off-Broadway and in San Francisco. It’s fun to go behind the scenes! Join us!