Troubling story of childhood rape takes local stage

WASILLA — What if the character an actor portrayed in a play was not really a character at all?

For the last few months, University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) faculty and graduates have been exploring that question in rehearsals and performances of “Stalking the Bogeyman,” a play inspired by the story of Anchorage-grown reporter David Holthouse’s childhood rape, and plans he made to murder his assailant.

“It’s definitely a story that’s captivated the whole area since 2004,” said director Brian Cook, an assistant theater professor at UAA.

On May 13, 2004, Holthouse told the world via the Denver Westword how he had been raped at age 7 by a 17-year-old family friend in December of 1978, and was prepared to kill that man upon discovering his whereabouts.

But instead of committing murder, Holthouse met the man in a public place and did his best to forgive him, believing that he had been the only victim of the rapist.

Over the next 11 years, Holthouse gradually received several testimonies to the contrary, at least three of which he believed to be true. So in June of last year, he wrote another story for the Anchorage Press, this time naming the perpetrator.

“Eleven years ago I chose the wrong ending for my story,” he wrote. “I kept part of myself trapped in a secret, haunted world, shared only with the man who raped me in 1978. That ends now.”

Following the publication of that story, Holthouse and California actor Markus Potter joined forces to translate the Westword essay into a play. The show’s world premiere took place in Asheville, North Carolina in 2013, followed by an off-Broadway run in 2014.

The UAA production, which opened this April during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, served as the West Coast premiere, and the play is now on tour around the state.

The show will be performed at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, May 27-28, at the Glenn Massay Theater in Palmer.

Being David

The local performance of “Stalking the Bogeyman” will give one UAA grad the opportunity to perform a leading role in his hometown.

Devin Frey, who graduated from Colony High School in 2010 and from UAA in December 2015, plays David in the play, a part he didn’t expect to land in auditions.

“I was really interested in the role of the bogeyman, because up to that point, I’d been working for what I could get,” Frey said.

Frey had plenty of theater experience prior to “Stalking the Bogeyman,” having worked behind the scenes and onstage at Colony and UAA, but his height, he had noticed, often prevented him from playing certain roles.

“If you’re a good head over everyone else and you’re supposed to be the wimp, it doesn’t quite make sense,” said the 6-foot-4-inch actor.

But this show was different. As Holthouse put it in his first essay, size didn’t matter much when he confronted his bogeyman.

“I had six inches and at least fifty pounds on him. But in a street fight, what matters more than size is motivation …” he wrote.

When Frey saw the final cast list for the UAA production, he was surprised but not unprepared. He had done his research on both Holthouse and the bogeyman, something he wouldn’t have been able to do for his role in, say, “Spamalot.”

“When you’re Guard no. 3, there’s not a lot of research (to be done),” Frey said.

Frey and his cast mates had the opportunity to speak with Holthouse after their first read-through of the script in January.

This actually “took a lot of the pressure off,” Frey said, because the actors were encouraged not to see the characters as mirror images of the real people of the story.

“Some of the nuances that he has, the character doesn’t,” Frey said.

Still, Frey said he did attempt to apply the real Holthouse’s style of speech to his lines, as well as incorporate subtle details of Holthouse’s behavior based on childhood photos provided by the author.

Holthouse attended a few of the rehearsals as well as a “talk back” session for the audience after the opening show in Anchorage, but Frey said it was the attendance of Holthouse’s parents that made him the most nervous.

“To be talking about (his) parents and what they did when they had no idea what was going on … saying that to their faces,” was nerve-wracking, Frey said.

Just traveling home from rehearsals was chilling, too. Frey moved back to the Valley after graduating from the university, so capping every Anchorage rehearsal with an hour-long drive back to Wasilla in a tiny car in the dark did nothing to calm his nerves, he said.

“The trick for me was spending a good hour doing something not related to the play before bed,” Frey said. “As long as I didn’t go to sleep with the play fresh on my mind, I’d be fine to wake up in the morning and be ready to tackle it again.”

Watching life go by

Holthouse said in a phone interview on Wednesday that he was impressed with Frey’s performance.

“He’s amazing,” Holthouse said. “I’ve seen five actors do this role now and Devin plays it the closest to how I actually perceived myself at the time that the play is set.”

Holthouse used phrases like “righteous, vengeful anger” and “wounded vulnerability” to describe the feelings conveyed by Frey as the adult David, remembering those sentiments welling up in himself in the months leading up to his meeting with the bogeyman. However, he usually tries not to dip into those emotions anymore, he said.

“Like a lot of survivors of childhood sexual assault, I think I have a very powerful ability to emotionally detach,” Holthouse said.

He compared his detachment to a steel wall slamming down between him and the actors onstage during a live performance, a sort of defense mechanism he’s subconsciously employed since the show’s world premiere.

“With every production I raise the wall a little more, let myself get a little bit closer to the heat source,” he said.

Seeing the show in Alaska, though — back where it all began — has been difficult, Holthouse said. He’s had “a lot of sleepless nights” in the last month, he said, and is always conscious of when the stage curtains open and the story of his life is exposed once more — whether he’s there to see it or not.

Though the actors may be able to distance themselves from the roles once the play is finished, Holthouse pointed out that he does not have that luxury.

“I don’t have that separation,” he said.

Sending a message

After the show premieres in London this fall, Holthouse said he plans to pull away from the personal promotion of “Stalking the Bogeyman,” though he hopes it will continue to be produced.

“If a play like this existed when I was a kid, it would’ve been a huge help to me,” he said.

Holthouse, Frey and Cook each acknowledged there is something impactful about the artistic expression of traumatic, real-world issues like sexual assault.

“You can’t go away from it,” Cook said. “The show starts and you’re there for 90 minutes.”

The show doesn’t have an intermission, but there is a short break between the curtain closing and the beginning of a panel discussion with Cook, university psychologist Rebecca Robinson and a representative from MY House, the local homeless youth organization.

This discussion, Frey said, will ideally extend beyond the theater’s walls, freeing victims from their silence.

“In today’s society, it’s not polite to talk about rape, it’s not polite to talk about abuse — there’s no sort of casual conversation you can have with someone about those things,” he said. “Hopefully this play helps remove the stigma from survivors of sexual assault and allows them to come forward and tell their stories and face this head on.”

Tickets for the Mat-Su performances of “Stalking the Bogeyman” are $10 for students, $15 general admission, available online at www.glennmassaytheater.com All proceeds go to MY House.

For more information about the play and other Alaska performances, visit www.uaa.alaska.edu/theatreanddance/stalking-the-bogeyman/

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.