Rainbow Sparks in 'A Great Wilderness' :: Peter Brown on An 'Ex Gay' Play

Just the other day, my own sister came out with a statement to the effect that gay and lesbian people choose their sexual orientations. Her reasoning? If it's not a choice, then "why is it," she asked, "that gays can walk away from that lifestyle?"

I did my best not to chide her, seeking instead to adopt a more neutral, reasonable tone. I pointed out how common it still is for gays and lesbians, especially those from religious backgrounds, to be pressured into heterosexual marriages. How many of them have actually "walked away" from their innate sexuality?

My contention was that none of them have. Some might be bisexual and simply focus on their attraction toward the opposite sex; many others, far less fortunate, lead lives fraught with inner conflict. I shared with my sister how common it's been for me to encounter gay men in their 60s and 70s who, after decades of marriage to someone they didn't feel a sexual attraction toward, have finally stepped away from those unfulfilling marriages, sometimes with the support of their spouses, children, and grandchildren, but sometimes not. It can be deeply devastating to wives and husbands, to say nothing of children, when a gay or lesbian person finally shrugs off the charade and claims his or her own natural identity as their own. Instead of living in such misery, only for marriages and families to end in confusion, recrimination, and emotional carnage, wouldn't it be better to let gay and lesbian people live authentically from the start?

I'd been pondering these questions extensively, because I had just seen the Zeitgeist Stage Company production of Samuel D. Hunter's play "A Great Wilderness," in which a man named Walt, a 70-something gentleman of firm religious conviction, wraps up a decades-long avocation as a counselor to gay teens. Walt is about to retire to an assisted living facility -- an imminent shift in his life that must, one assumes, give him a fresh perspective on what it's like to be relegated to an institution instead of remaining at home, surrounded and accepted by family.

Walt has run his tiny counseling operation out of a cabin in the woods of Idaho. That, in the literal sense, is the "Great Wilderness" of the play's title. But as Walt is contemplating the end of his career -- and his life as he's known it -- he ends up unexpectedly with one final teen to counsel, a 16-year-old boy named (with Old Testament aptness) Daniel. This brings Walt to the play's metaphorical great wilderness, one that's also scripture-like in its spiritual scope: Walt's physical and mental acuities are deteriorating, but what about his soul? What has so many decades of plying the "cure the young gays" trade done to him spiritually?

"Walt has had this program for about thirty years," Peter Brown, who plays Walt in the Zeitgeist production, told me one sodden afternoon this week, as we chatted in the lobby of the Plaza Black Box theater at the Boston Center for the Arts. Brown has long been an accomplished actor on Boston stages, and he's been in ten previous productions with Zeitgeist alone, including a couple of Edward Albee plays, a production of "The Normal Heart," and last season's critically acclaimed production of "The Big Meal."

"He started [the counseling business] with his then-wife Abby, who is another character in the play," Brown added. "Walt's ex-wife and her [current] husband are now also helping counselors at the camp. The roots of it," Brown added, "are through their church."

Ah, yes, of course. That's another way in which the play ties in with almost prescient resonance to the... well, the zeitgeist, if you'll pardon the use of the word. With so many states tripping over themselves to pass "Freedom of Religion" laws that rationalize the discarding of anti-discrimination laws on the basis of an individual's "deeply held religious or moral convictions," the peddling of a new strain of anti-gay animus has almost become a brand new cottage industry -- one with the potential to spill over into racial and religious discrimination, all of it rooted in a sense that one person's faith can and should trump everyone else's civil rights.

But in the course of the play, Daniel (played by Jake Orozco-Herman) goes missing, and Walt can't quite remember the boy's parting words -- words that might hold the key as to his whereabouts. That metaphorical wilderness could be anything: Walt's self-doubt and excoriation at having fallen short of the critical task of keeping a young person in his care safe; the terrors of a future in which his mind gradually slips away and strangers employed at a home increasingly intrude upon his personal dignity; his entire life, ever since a crucial turning point, more than half a century earlier, when Walt decided to "walk away" from his own implied homosexuality.

Brown offered his own thoughts, saying, "Well, the end of the play is the beginning of this new realm [of possibility], but I think it's more coming to terms with the past rather than setting a direction for the future. I think that's what people at that age do. It's part of our natural process, to work things out, to look at things in a more retrospective way, because you have a lot to be retro about -- you know? It's his past. It's better to be enlightened the day before you die than the day after you die."

Do a little online research into so-called "reparative therapy," or have a chat with activist Sam Brinton, who works to educate lawmakers about the physical and psychological torments of faith-based programs designed to "cure" gays, and you might find your hair standing on end (if you don't out and out get nauseous). Indeed, as lawmakers have looked more closely at the industry, they've become concerned enough to take action to protect kids from it -- some states have outlawed the practice on minors.

But Walt isn't a sicko or a psycho or a sadist who has found a niche in the "ex-gay" industry. He's a man who genuinely cares for the health and well-being of the children placed in his care. It's a startling aspect to the openly gay Hunter's play, and it humanizes Walt. It also creates a dramatic counterpoint to the way Walt and his co-counselors Anny (Shelley Brown) and Tim (Thomas Grenon) talk about their work and those they seek to benefit; in their every exchange, the counselors unthinkingly, casually refer to gays as "sinning," and you get the definite sense that while they are talking about sex, they are also talking about desire... and more than that, the very state of being gay.

"He's coming from total conviction," Brown said of his character, "and as a young man Walt has gone through a similar process -- sixty years ago, in a day where, you know, the stakes around coming out were much higher."

In other words, as Brown sees him, Walt the "ex-gay" counselor embraced a "heterosexual lifestyle" out of self-preservation. "I think part of that may have been grabbing at any opportunity [not to be gay], and a lot of repression," Brown added.

That's not merely an actor's choice of interpretation. It's built into the script, unmistakably implicit in the way Walt can't answer, with enthusiasm, when the missing boy's anxious mother (Christine Power) asks whether Walt himself really did transform from gay to straight. And it's present in the way Abby, who is Walt's ex-wife as well as an ex-gay counselor at the camp, flatly declares that the reason they ended up divorcing was because "You never loved me."

But there is a reason why it's Walt who is at the center of the play, instead of Daniel.

"It's a fork in the road for him," Brown noted. "He and his ex-wife, Abby, are talking about selling the place and Walt going into a retirement home. He fell, previously, so he's starting physically to need help.... I think it is part of Walt losing a little control of his life, and as we lose control we try to hang on to the old [ways of doing things] instead of going with it."

But even Walt's grip on those old patterns of thinking is starting to slip away, dislodged by a growing realization that his life is nearly over -- and it has never been a life lived with complete integrity or authenticity.

"As far as stepping out of the play and looking at the device, Walt's character represents a change to our culture," Brown said. "Coming from whatever we came from, and not in a malicious way. I think that was one of the playwright's main intentions."

When asked what drew him to the role -- aside from his familiarity with, and obvious fondness for, Zeitgeist Theater Company -- Brown revealed something surprising and fitting for the subject matter at hand.

"I'm a school teacher," he said, "and the last couple years have been a real shift as far as awareness around the impact of [GLBT youths] being bullied, being harassed to the point of committing suicide because of their sexuality.

"I teach middle school," Brown went on to say. "At every meeting, we talk about bullying, about kids at risk of being bullied or being bullies. A big part of that is kids being bullied about their sexuality."

At this, I had to raise the question: Do they even understand, at that age, what it is they're talking about?

"I think so," Brown said. "They're young, but that part of their brains are exploding -- that's the part where they're growing, Up to eight years old, our brains grow in the language and word area. That's why kids pick up languages. In middle school it's [the social area of the brain that's developing]. All that kids care about is their friends. Developmentally, it's very appropriate. They're trying to find their way. Well, when someone is trying to find their way, when they get pushed to the point of depression and suicide... we've had a real enlightenment as far as that issue, I think, in our culture over the past five years."

I had another question for Brown at that point: What would it take for that enlightenment to trickle down to middle schoolers?

"For the most part, being aware of it and knowing that it's wrong," the actor responded. "It's wrong to get on anybody about any differences they may have, whether it's racial or religious, or their gender identity, their sexual preference, whatever. They are bombarded with information, and they can get the wrong messages, so you have got to get the right messages in there and let them have an opportunity to see that. The consistency of he message is, I think, how they get it."

Teachers can't really talk about these things to their students, though, can they?

"No," Brown said, before re-phrasing. "As far as people's right, absolute you can. Laws, what you can do and what you can't do as far as what you say to people. Repeated words are behaviors, and those have impact, and they can be very harmful. In that regard, you look at the behavior. Is it appropriate, or is it not appropriate?"

I was curious about Brown's long association with Zeitgeist, and asked whether he felt the various roles he's taken with the company share a common thread.

"No," Brown reflected, "because they are all very different. I really feel fortunate to have been able to work with David, and with everyone I've had the opportunity to work with, do the things that I've done. But the [common] thread is, I think, that the plays I have done with David, they all say something."

So they do, and so does "A Great Wilderness." Hunter's play says something profound and eloquent, and refuses to indulge in blame or cheap one-upmanship in doing so. My sister might even find, in this play, the answer to the question she posed to me -- a question I did my best to answer, though I don't think I convinced her. Maybe I should just go and buy her a ticket, and let the playwright, Samuel D. Hunter, answer for me.

"A Great Wilderness" continues through May 21 at the Boston Center for the Arts. For tickets and more information, please go to http://zeitgeiststage.com