In the mid 1970s, you were one of the subjects of Max Ford McBride’s experiments on so-called “reparative therapy” at BYU. Why did you decide to write a play about what must have been a very painful experience?

The decision to write the play was a very long time coming. In the 25 years before I began work on the script, the idea never crossed my mind. To begin with I was not overly proud of my decision to do the therapy and told very few people about it. It wasn’t a subject that I wanted to share. Also, I had spent so much of my life trying to forget and minimize what I had done that I had somehow convinced myself that most people would find it more disgusting than interesting. I thought the subject matter just wasn’t worthy of attention.

Then two things happened that changed everything. I stumbled onto the Affirmation website by total accident and read Connell O’Donovan’s History of Homosexuality at Brigham Young University. I was stunned by what I read. I learned that my experience belonged to a much larger community. I learned about the purge. I learned that my therapy was not an isolated event, but simply one of the more visible elements in a long history of abuse. It really shook up my very safe, insulated life. I made brief contact with Connell to thank him. That led to the second event. I was contacted by a journalist who Connell had referred, asking for an interview. At first I was very skeptical of doing it, but when I learned of Merrill Bateman’s denial I was infuriated. So I agreed to it, but had no idea what I was getting myself into. As we talked by email and phone over a period of a few weeks I was forced to relive the experience in detail for the first time in over two decades. The result was a three year depression. I finally began to deal for with what I had done to my life and it was pretty hard to face. Writing the play was a way for me to work though my anger and isolation.

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