Missionary Position
Writer and performer Steven Fales continues with his Mormon Boy Trilogy with Missionary Position, his follow-up to his award-winning "Confessions of a Mormon Boy."
With just a bare stage and few props, most prominently a trunk from which he removes journals and letters, Fales follows his journey as a Mormon missionary in Portugal at the age of 19. Those documents recount a time in his life where the oppression of the Mormon Church caused him to question and doubt his faith, as well as deny his already repressed homosexuality.
Sometimes reading directly from his journals, Fales dramatizes his decision to partake in the two-year mission, (an honor for a newly adult Mormon), and how that decision came to affect every aspect of his life.
From the moment the play begins, we meet an attractive, boyish, and energetic man who makes no bones about expressing the conflict he felt as his homosexuality came into direct conflict with his desire to serve God. We understand how a man who knew nothing but his faith would undergo such a challenge, even while wrestling with emotions he didn’t understand.
With humor and honesty, Fales explains his decision to petition for a missionary position, and follows him to the campus where he and hundreds of other hopefuls train for it, right through to the mission itself. Enroute he addresses his desire to serve, as well as his questioning the hypocrisy of the only faith he’d ever known.
By keeping his narrative focused on his own experiences, Fales allows us to cringe at the Mormon Church’s idiosyncratic rules and dogma, while eliciting compassion for his outsider status with the only religion he ever knew. And when addressing similarities to Scientology, Fales points out that the Mormon Church is the original freak religion replete with odd rituals and a need for stringent conformity.
Fales mixes humor with the heartfelt struggle he endures, adding show tunes and sexualized fantasies to dramatic effect. That you grow to care for him and go along with him on his journey is essential to the success of this one-person show.
As staged by Michael A. Shepperd, "Missionary Positions" moves a relatively quick pace, faltering only with a confusing use of time shifts. Some of the characters in his two-year journey come and go too quickly, leaving some of his stories more anecdotal than they need to be, with certain key points left without enough of an explanation. For instance, his wife and children are mentioned more than once, but never fully explained in how they came to be. In all likelihood there role in his life will be explored in the third part of the trilogy: "Who’s Your Daddy?"
In the wake of the Mormon Church’s involvement in California’s Proposition 8 fiasco, the timing for this show couldn’t be better. But this coincidence does not distract from Fales’ agenda, which is to illustrate how one young man began to question his faith and his sexuality without coming to a tidy conclusion. His experiences may have been personally daunting, but without them he wouldn’t be able to tell this rich story of a man losing his faith, coming to accept who he is and regaining his faith in a way truer than when he started.
Through February 8, 2009 at the Celebration Theatre, 7051B Santa Monica Blvd, Hollywood, California. For more information visit the Celebration Theatre website.
