The Salt Lake Tribune reports that "Facing East," Carol Lynn Pearson's play about an excommunicated gay Latter-day Saint, is returning to Utah stages 20 years after its debut. Audience members and cast describe the work as still relevant to current debates about LGBTQ members and Church policy.

The play explores themes of faith, family relationships, and acceptance through the story of a gay man's excommunication and its impact on his family. Pearson, a prominent Mormon writer, drew on personal experience—her late husband came out as gay.

Producers say the play's questions about reconciling sexual orientation with religious community remain urgent for many Latter-day Saint families two decades later.