Diverse works onstage this week

A new play still in development, a Broadway musical and an Oscar Wilde classic are among the diverse works opening on local stages this week.

"FACING EAST," a new work-in-progress by playwright-poet Carol Lynn Pearson, will have a staged reading today at 2:30 p.m. in the Black Box Theatre of the Rose Wagner Center, 238 W. Broadway (300 South), under the auspices of Plan-B Theatre Company.

The play, which Plan-B has scheduled later this year as a fully staged production, revolves around two Latter-day Saint parents attempting to come to grips with the suicide of their gay son.

The play, which Pearson says is still in development, is not based on the highly publicized suicide of Stuart Matis in February 2000, during the time when the controversy over California's proposal to prohibit the recognition of other states' same-sex marriages was coming to a head.

Following publication 20 years ago of her own autobiographical book, "Goodbye, I Love You," Pearson received and collected dozens of stories about others' similar experiences. The new play is based mostly on one young man's story of his own suicide attempt.

"But I know that the despair that these young people — and older people, too — face is so huge, and the extreme response is suicide," Pearson said by phone. "Their self-destructive, self-loathing is so strong that they just can't live with themselves, and that is just untenable."

According to Jerry Rapier, Plan-B's producing director, the drama "is a timely and frank discussion of the definition of family, given the passage of Amendment 3 last year and the current controversy over gay support groups in area high schools."

Featured actors for the reading will be Joyce Cohen, Kevin Doyle and Jay Perry. Pearson will be on hand following the reading for a post-play discussion with the audience.

Tickets are $15, available at the Rose Wagner box office. Proceeds will benefit the GLBT Community Center.

A FREE POST-PLAY DISCUSSION, "The Evolution of Elder Care in U.S. Society," cosponsored by Pygmalion Productions and the Utah Humanities Council, will be held today about 4 p.m. at the Rose Wagner Center, 138 W. Broadway (300 South), following the 2 p.m. matinee performance of "Knowing Cairo."

The play focuses on an 80-year-old Jewish widow in New York City and the confrontations that arise between her hired caregiver and a daughter.