In the mid-’70s Cameron was one of 14 gay men, most of them Mormon students, who were the subjects of a controversial “reparative therapy” experiment at Brigham Young that used electro-shock aversion therapy in an attempt to alter their homosexual behavior.

Cameron’s “14,” which completed its world-premiere run last weekend at the University Theatre’s Mainstage in Iowa City, takes a hard look at the experiment and its effects on his life. Sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, this disturbing tale examines one man’s journey to find truth and ultimately the forgiveness that only he can give.

Read Iowa Independent’s exclusive interview with John Cameron below the fold.Set in the year 2000, “14″ follows the events that unravel after a college professor, Ron Sorenson, is contacted by a young lesbian journalist who has discovered he was one of the 14 subjects. Mirroring Cameron’s real-life experiences, Sorenson talks to the journalist and is forced to face the mistakes of the past, and his life begins to fall apart as he enters a world of dark and sometimes funny memories, violence, music — and the visceral horror of the experiment.

Cameron, who heads the UI’s acting program, describes himself as a closeted playwright. “I’ve got a drawer full of plays, but I’ve always written them just to work out my own demons,” Cameron told the Iowa Independent. “I just enjoyed the act of writing, so I’ve never tried to promote them before.”

Cameron admits that it was his experiences directing plays, rather than acting, that helps him with play writing. “When I’m writing, I frequently visualize very clearly what’s happening on the stage. It helps me keep clear in my head what really going on and what’s possible, and what affects the audience,” Cameron said. “Generally I haven’t directed plays I’ve written before ‘14.’ The problem with a lot of playwrights is they are not directors, so they don’t necessarily know how to bring the play out.”

Now that the initial run of “14″ is behind him, Cameron had a chance to reflect with the Iowa Independent before tackling rewrites and sending the play out for future theatrical productions.

Iowa Independent: What were some of the risks of putting the details of your experiences with “reparative therapy” on paper and bringing them to life in front of a room full of strangers?

Cameron: (Laughs) For some reason, it didn’t strike me until the last couple days of the production that all of my students now know my whole sexual history. I don’t feel awkward about that, because I’m not that kind of person. It’s kind of funny. A whole lot of people know a whole hell of a lot about me in this community, and I wasn’t really thinking about this until the end of the run.

Iowa Independent: You took such a big risk to expose yourself to a room full of strangers. How come this did not cross your mind until the process nearly ended?

Cameron: I was actually very engaged in the play, its success and communicating with the audience. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that they were looking at me. Rather, I was focused on the theatrical success of the production. It wasn’t until the last few days of the run that I started realizing what the hell was actually up there on the stage. By the time I started directing this play, I was pretty much past the subject matter. It was all about putting the play up, but now it’s hard to explain how I wasn’t actually thinking about the play’s content.

I was so consumed about getting the play right, I didn’t actually think about what people in the community might think about me.

Iowa Independent: Are you working on anything new, whether it’s a closeted play or otherwise?

Cameron: I’m working on an adaptation of a short story about a Appalachian girl who receives healing powers through her country western radio station. This play is a complete change of pace from “14.” It’s very charming, romantic, and nonviolent.

Iowa Independent: During this whole process from the play’s conception to ending its first runs, what was one of the biggest surprises for you?

Cameron: I was genuinely surprised how interested the people were in the play’s subject matter. We sold out every performance. Considering it’s a first run of a play, I was surprised we sold out opening night, and I was shocked we sold out every night. People had to have been drawn to the play’s subject matter, because they did not know the play. I had been told this subject was important and I needed to get it out there, but I don’t think I fully believed this until I saw how people responded it to it.

Iowa Independent: Who was telling you that you needed to get this play out there?

Cameron: I never thought about writing this play until about seven years ago, when I was approached by a journalist who was writing about gay oppression at BYU. I was surprised to find out that the Rolling Stone and the Village Voice were also interested in this story, and when I told a colleague of mine, she told me that I had some amazing stuff to work with and I needed to write a play. As I began to develop the play, there were people who championed the play and wanted to see it done.

Iowa Independent: Did the Rolling Stone or Village Voice ever contact you for an interview?

Cameron: No, ultimately they did not. Her interview sent my life into a tailspin, and then they didn’t publish the story. Eventually The Advocate published the interview, but they ended up cutting all of the stuff about my experiences at BYU from the interview. So I went through this whole journey, and they never published it. It was a very ironic situation, but in the long run it turned out to be a very good situation for me.

Originally, in either 1999 or 2000, two students had been expelled from BYU because they were accused of being homosexuals, and somehow the interviewer found me while researching for this story. And this interview began an unraveling for me in that I went into a three-year depression.

When I came out the other side of the depression, I started writing the play. The journalist, who I’ve had no contact with since the interview, has no idea how this interview ended changing my life.

Iowa Independent: Given your experiences at BYU, are you still a member or actively involved with the Mormon Church?

Cameron: I stopped being involved with it when I was 29, when I made a conscious choice to move away from the church. I don’t have any animosity toward the Mormon Church. I think, however, they should apologize and admit what they did, and move on. I think it would be a good thing for them to say they were trying to help people out with what they thought was sin and made some unfortunate choices, and we’re sorry for those. I think this would go a long way to make people feel better, but I don’t think this is ever going to happen. In this world, if you apologize, you’re open for lawsuits.

Iowa Independent: A lot of people in America, in particular social conservatives, are so hostile toward gay people. Do you think this hostility is a manifestation of something they are trying to repress on a deeper level?

Cameron: People are afraid of anything that does not mirror them and tell them that they are OK and their life has meaning and value. When they see somebody that doesn’t mirror them and they’re happy and successful in what they are doing, that makes them question their own identity and insecurities. Faced with this, they have two options: You can either let the other person live their life, or you can attack them because they threaten you. This holds true for anything, not just people threatened by gay people. And I don’t think this is ever going to change.

Iowa Independent: Do you see yourself as an activist or a champion for gay rights?

Cameron: No, not at all. I just thought it was a story that just needed to be told. The end of the play ends very abruptly and for a reason. Suddenly the narrator comes out and says all these things about truth and lies until she’s cut off by the main character, who tells her to stop talking to the audience. He turns to the audience and says “She’s not going to talk to you anymore, because I don’t want any morals. I don’t want a nice, neat little ending. I just want the story to be told, so we can move on from here.”

And that’s very much my philosophy. I told the story. I hope people will see the play, and I hope some people learned some things. That’s all I want.

As Connell O’Donovan notes in “The Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature,” the long-term effects of the electric shock “therapy” these men were subjected to has been crippling. Two of the men committed suicide soon after completing this torturous study.

Moreover, Donovan notes that every survivor he interviewed has suffered life-long emotional, spiritual, and sometimes physical damage, including Cameron, who wrote to O’Donovan: “For 22 years now I have lived with the scars of the experience — unable to articulate a personal suffering and longing that have almost crippled me. …. I didn’t completely come out of the closet until I was 34, and only after much angry, pissed-off therapy. I spent a lot of money just so I could yell at my psychologist and break things in his office for an hour every week for two years. But it was a hell of a lot more fun than Ford McBride and the electrodes.”

Now, 30 years later, Cameron, a University of Iowa Department of Theatre Arts faculty member, takes a hard look at the experiment and its effects on his life in his new play, “14.” Written and directed by Cameron, the University Theatres Mainstage presented the world premiere of “14″ last weekend and will stage additional performances at 8 p.m. Feb. 6 to 9, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 10.“The decision to write the play was a very long time coming,” Cameron said in a news release. “In the 25 years before I began work on the script, the idea never crossed my mind. To begin with, I was not overly proud of my decision to dothe therapy and told very few people about it. It wasn’t a subject that I wanted to share,” Cameron said. “Also, I had spent so much of my life trying to forget and minimize what I had done that I had somehow convinced myself that most people would find it more disgusting than interesting. I thought the subject matter just wasn’t worthy of attention.”

But then he stumbled on a Web site for the Mormon gay organization Affirmation and read an extensive history of homosexuality at BYU. “I was stunned by what I read,” Cameron said. “I learned that my experience belonged to a much larger community. I learned about the purge. I learned that my therapy was not an isolated event, but simply one of the more visible elements in a long history of abuse. It really shook up my very safe, insulated life.”

Cameron contacted O’Donovan, and as a result he was approached by a journalist, who requested an interview. At first, he was skeptical in being interviewed, but after finding out that Merrill Bateman, who became president in BYU in 1996, claimed he could find no evidence the experiment ever took place on campus, Cameron became infuriated. “So I agreed to it, but had no idea what I was getting myself into,” Cameron said in a statement.

“As we talked by e-mail and phone over a period of a few weeks, I was forced to relive the experience in detail for the first time in over two decades. The result was a three-year depression. I finally began to deal with what I had done to my life, and it was pretty hard to face. Writing the play was a way for me to work though my anger and isolation.”

Sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, this disturbing tale examines one man’s journey to find truth and, ultimately, the forgiveness that only he can give. Set in the year 2000, “14″ follows the events that unravel after a college professor, Ron Sorenson (see pic) , is contacted by a young lesbian journalist who has discovered he was one of the 14 subjects. Mirroring Cameron’s real-life experiences, Sorenson talks to the journalist and is forced to face the mistakes of the past, and his life begins to fall apart as he enters a world of dark and sometimes funny memories, violence, music — and the visceral horror of the experiment.

Asked whether these experiments left him with emotional or spiritual scars, Cameron told Hugo Salinas during an interview with Affirmation: “I’ve only recently begun to realize that I have completely shut down my sexual life for the last 25 years. I have never been able to maintain a long-term relationship with another man,” Cameron said. “Instead I have substituted a number of ill-advised and emotionally destructive relationships with women.

“Looking back I can honestly say that I was afraid of gay men. I felt true resentment and disgust for the gay community while simultaneously wishing I could somehow participate. The recognition of this and my efforts to change it have only begun within the last two or three years, and I am still struggling. I recently began to make some gay friends and make my first steps into this new world.”

Asked if he could find a place for forgiveness in the process of healing from abuse, Cameron told Salinas, “I’m in the middle of it now. I don’t think forgiveness is an event. It’s a process, and I don’t know if it ever ends,” Cameron said. “Sometimes I think it is too easily said. I don’t believe in complete closure.”