| Description |
The Zion Curtain is a documentary play about the collision of ideology and civil rights, using the words of real people to trace the roots and show the effects of reactionary, homophobic doctrines in the Mormon Church. Every "um," "uh," and pause is performed as spoken in original interviews by the author and Matthew Beckham in the fall of 2008 when they were still members of the LDS (Mormon) Church for a documentary film that never came to fruition. They had met while serving as LDS missionaries in Chile in 2000. The making of the documentary coincided with national social upheaval springing from the passage of California's Proposition 8, intended to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and supported largely by religious organizations like the Mormon Church. These events, combined with other experiences and discussions related to the filming of the documentary, eventually contributed to Russell and Beckham's decision to leave the church and embrace antitheist philosophies. One of the most potent of those experiences was an interview conducted with Mary and Peter Danzig, prior members of the LDS Church's Orchestra at Temple Square, who faced private and public persecution following Peter's decision to speak out publicly against the church's stance on homosexuality. Their moving story, told in their own words, forms the bulk of the play's second act. |
