Plan-B will close out its 2007-2008 season with the Utah premiere of Martin Moran’s The Tricky Part, a one-man production which tells the author’s experience as a teenager who had a sexual relationship with an older man. Moran’s play, written 30 years after the fact, was developed at the Sundance Theatre Lab. The play won an Obie Award as an off-Broadway theater production and has enjoyed a steadily growing reputation for its mastery of the monologue format and its transcendent themes.

Although Moran regularly performs the play, the Utah production, directed by Plan-B’s producing director Jerry Rapier, will feature local actor David Spencer. The play opens May 30 with performances Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. in the Rose Wagner’s Studio Theater. The run ends June 15. Ticket information is available here.

The play begins during Moran’s formative years, when he, between the ages of 12 and 15, had a sexual relationship with an older man who is given a pseudonym in the play. A native of Colorado, the young Moran, then 10, met the man when he was at St. Malo, a Catholic camp at the foot of Mount Meeker in the Rocky Mountains. In his play which starts in the early 1970s, Moran recalls the man, who then was in his late 20s, as a lay counselor, Vietnam War veteran and a captivating storyteller. The sexual relationship did not begin until two years later when the older man started his own camp.

Moran sustains — wisely so — a certain amount of discretion. In 2004, the Denver Post ran a substantial front-page article which named the older man and provided details of his criminal record. The man was twice convicted of crimes relating to sexual contact with boys in 1977 and 1983. He served four months in jail in the first instance, and in the second, his sentence was suspended after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault, according to The Post article.

In Moran’s play, however, the catharsis rests squarely upon the redemptive power of grace and reconciliation, not upon the retributive forces of blame and punishment. The title reflects the need to bring clarity to a confusing, chaotic time in life without oversimplifying the events and details. Perhaps, as Moran’s play suggests, for all of us, the “tricky part” is to find comprehensible patterns in our own deeply profound emotional and moral struggles, discoveries, and interactions.

Moran’s play, with a running time of roughly 85 minutes, moves from his boyhood accounts of attending Catholic school to the sexual affair and to the reunion with the man, who became a seriously ill diabetic patient at a veteran’s hospital. The actual reunion took place in 2002, when Moran attempted to contact the man and he agreed to meet.

Critics have consistently praised Moran’s account for its capacity to bring immediacy to long-ago events with crystal-clear precision and its nuanced mix of humor and pathos, drawing extensively from metaphors steeped in religion and nature.

Editor’s Note: The Selective Echo is pleased to provide this Q&A with the playwright.

SE: In comparing the book and stage forms, what aspects of your story — particularly those of such profound intimacy — did you believe were the most difficult to transfer from the printed page to the stark revealing aspects of the stage? And, what aspects do you believe are perhaps best served by the theatrical version?

MM: Especially at the beginning, what I found most scary and most difficult was the thought of sharing the intimacy of the sexual seduction itself. I felt so deeply concerned that, if I was able to do it at all, it be conveyed in a respectful, graceful manner. It’s one thing for someone to read that stuff alone in a chair and another to hear it aloud in a group. We were able to finesse that with specific stage craft: reading from the journal, using different lighting.

There are two aspects that I think come alive perhaps in the theater more than on the page. The humor and the communal experience of Paradox. By that I mean sensing an audience galvanizing around provocative complex questions, experiencing this together in space and time.

SE: Frequently, you perform the play yourself but, in this SLC run, one of Plan-B’s actors (David Spencer) will be filling the role. What do you discover or observe when you see another actor articulate this role?

MM: More than anything what I discovered is the ability of the play to stand on its own without me. Which is a good feeling. I was able to see and to appreciate much more the structure of the writing, of the evening.

SE: Redemption and restoration seem to be potentially powerful themes leading to epiphanies not just for yourself but for those attending the performance. In your experience, what have you learned from audience members who have seen the play?

MM: From many audience members I have learned how the idea of: “Is it possible that what harms us might come to restore us?” can be so universal. That the harm of something in our past is not just about ‘abuse’ but about any number of tragedies or events that what we think of as damage in our lives. There are many different ways for many different reasons many of us are trying to reach understanding about our past. To let go and be fully in the present.

SE: The play is as much witty as it is profoundly dramatic and moving. Why is comedy so intrinsically significant to making the play work?

MM: The Tricky Part deals with a loaded subject and I knew that it was terribly important to disarm my listeners/readers. Humor is a way for all of us to breathe and relax and be together, allowing us to journey deeper into the heart of the story.

SE: How has the Tricky Part informed your broader work as an actor, performer, and writer?

MM: Well, the writing and performing of the book and play has been profoundly liberating. In attempting to be as transparent as possible, as personal as I know how to be, I have found a deeper kind of faith in our essential oneness as human beings. That’s very liberating.