Curio Theatre Company is in the midst of a fundraising campaign for a new play about Frank Schaefer, the Pennsylvania Methodist minister who was defrocked after officiating at his gay son’s wedding.
The structure of the play, titled “The Frank Schaefer Project,” is still changing, much like the story it is based on, said artistic director Paul Kuhn.
“We have a rough draft of our play right now,” Kuhn said. “Currently, we have three acts. The first act is like meta-theater, revealing our process to create this piece. The second act is directly portraying the trial literally as it happened. And the third act will be the wedding that occurred with [Schaefer’s son] and his partner in Massachusetts. That’s what’s happening, but the story is still evolving.”
So true.
We talked to Kuhn before Schaefer was reinstated June 24, when the Methodist Church overturned his defrocking.
Gay Carducci, managing director of Curio Theatre Company, said that Schaefer’s reinstatement could possibly be only temporary.
“As far as Frank being ‘refrocked,’ it is great news and the story is still unfolding,” Carducci said. “He can still be made to appear in front of the judicial court who could possibly overturn the decision. This could happen in October.”
And even before that turn of the story, Kuhn was anticipating the changes they might have to make.
“There are still so many dramatic things happening to Frank Schaefer still to this day,” Kuhn said. “It might happen that he will be defrocked again by the judicial council of the United Methodist Church. That could happen all the way up until the beginning of our play and beyond. We might not know the genuine outcome. We have the shape of our play right now. We have a play that we’d be proud to put on in front of an audience right now. But we are adding these new details. Some of the things we don’t have are statements from the people who are outspokenly against Frank. We’ve heard about them rhetorically for interviews we have done. But now we are entrenching ourselves in that church itself to try and get direct statements from the people who had an active part in kicking him out of this ministry.”
Kuhn added that he is even going so far as to visit the church in order to at least get their side of the story.
“I’ve gone to that church service and attended as a parishioner,” Kuhn said. “I wasn’t undercover at all, but I didn’t tell them who I was and that I’m writing a play about them. I have been told that they are hateful people. They have been quoted as being called cancerous and homophobic. I’m not taking it for granted that they are. I want to hear directly from them. I want to be as neutral as I can and represent their work. Obviously, there isn’t a single member of our group that isn’t pro-gay marriage. None of us are religious in this group. We do have leanings that way but we are trying to set them aside and get the accurate story.”
Another development that Kuhn and the theater company had to factor in since they started putting the play together was the legalization of marriage equality in Pennsylvania.
Kuhn said that the ruling elicited mixed emotions.
“I was in Canada when I heard that Pennsylvania legalized gay marriage,” Kuhn said. “But my heart sunk a little bit. I thought, ‘Oh, no. Is our play over?’ I mean I’m happy in a sense but at the same time I’m thinking about this play that we have devoted all our lives to; we have never been so immersed in a piece ever at Curio than we are in this. And then I immediately went and started writing again and I added that directly to the piece. The actors will talk about if the play is dead now that marriage is legal in Pennsylvania; we work that out in front of the audience. The fact is no, this makes our piece more pertinent because now it puts more focus and pressure on these religious organizations. Now gay marriage is legal in Pennsylvania, what are you going to do? Are you going to accept these people as full members of your church? Currently right now they say that they accept the LGBTQ community into their congregations, as long as they don’t practice their sexuality. And that is totally hypocritical and that is what that battle is about. It had a greater impact on the story.”
Speaking of impact, we had to ask how Schaefer felt about having this ongoing struggle for vindication made into a play, while things are still playing out in real life. Kuhn said the minister has been nothing but cooperative with their needs every step of the way.
“Frank has been consulting with us on a regular basis, pretty much every day,” Kuhn said. “He hasn’t seen the material we have written and hasn’t signed off on anything. He has just been open and available to us for everything. He’s been incredibly generous through this whole process. We haven’t had a single moment where anything we have put out there has jeopardized his status in the trial to date. He’s very outspoken. He considers himself an advocate now, a voice for the LGBTQ community, and he’s not backing down from that. So he’s not afraid of anything we might say in this theater piece. A lot of people tell us things off the record or in confidence and we will never reveal that. But during Frank’s interview, I think there was maybe one thing that was off the record but he’s been really wide open with his story.”
While the story of Schaefer’s status with the Methodist Church might drag on for the foreseeable future, Kuhn said Curio Theatre Company plans to have the play ready to debut where the controversy started by later this year.
“We will sift through all this material and we start formal rehearsals in August,” he said. “Then we are still looking for a venue in Lebanon, but I’m not getting responses for obvious reasons. My theory is that that process is so controversial in that community that no one wants to be associated with it. But the first performances of our play will be in Lebanon in November. We have no idea where it’s going to be. And then we will open it in West Philadelphia.”
For more information on “The Frank Schaefer Project” and its fundraising campaign, visit https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1737488892/the-frank-schaefer-project or www.curiotheatre.org.