It may surprise some Mormons, a people famed for their missionaries, to learn that sexual relations can go beyond the missionary position. Those folks may pick up a few things — or at least get a good laugh — from The Mormon Kama Sutra, a collaboration between two of Utah’s treasures (pronounced “TRAY-zhurz”): Sister Dottie S. Dixon and Pat Bagley.
By Sean P. MeansTribune Columnist
If you don’t know these two, some introductions. Bagley, as Tribune readers know, is this newspaper’s editorial cartoonist (and 2008 winner of the prestigious Herblock Prize). Sister Dottie is quickly becoming a one-woman phenomenon, with appearances on radio, the Internet and her one-woman play “The Passion of Sister Dottie S. Dixon — Second Helpings,” playing six nights a week (except Tuesdays) until Oct. 25 at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 W. 300 South, Salt Lake City.
The Mormon Kama Sutra shows faithful LDS members ways to enjoy bedroom activities with one’s E.C. (Eternal Companion). It identifies body parts, from the male organ (that’s the thing that plays music at the Tabernacle) to the Ohmyheck spot (the female body’s equivalent to “that little bald man inside the door who checks your temple recommend”). And it introduces Mormon-friendly sexual positions with such names as “The Jell-O Pin” and “Pulling the Handcart” — all with handy drawings, by Bagley, of a pudgy Mormon married couple.
The book, whose cover seal boasts it is the “40th anniversary edition,” didn’t exist other than a prop in a play, admits Salt Lake actor Charles Lynn Frost, the man under Sister Dottie’s wig and granny glasses.In “The Passion of …,” written by Frost and Troy Williams, Dottie describes and acts out scenes from her life as an upstanding Mormon woman from Spanish Fork. She also speaks at great length about the two loves in her life: Her husband Donnie and their only child, Donnie Jr., who is gay.
The Mormon Kama Sutra appears in the first scene, when Dottie discovers a copy of the book in her wedding-night bed, given to Donnie by his more world-wise sister. Dottie credits one position, the “Y Mount,” for leading to Donnie Jr.’s conception.
“Everybody kept saying, ‘Is that a real book?,’ ” Frost said over coffee last week. Frost and Williams, sensing a marketing opportunity, started writing one — and Frost approached Bagley about illustrating it.
After trying to write descriptions for Bagley to illustrate, Frost said, “we realized Pat’s got to draw it first.” They came up with 25 or 30 ideas, including a few same-sex options to make the book “more inclusional.” (“We helped Pat with those,” Frost said. “He doesn’t have a gay gene in his body.”)
Between the play and now the book, Sister Dottie (which Frost and Williams first created as a recurring character on community radio station KRCL) has quickly joined the pantheon of Mormon parody — alongside the potshot humor of “Saturday’s Voyeur” and the green Jell-O jokes of many LDS-themed movies.
A key to Dottie’s success, Frost believes, is her warmth. “I didn’t want her to be mean,” Frost said, adding that some LDS spoofs “can be vicious.”
Frost believes Dottie’s love for her son benefits the gay-and-lesbian audience, which doesn’t get many characters to embrace from Hollywood. Even the most acclaimed gay-themed movie in recent years, “Brokeback Mountain,” features characters who “end up either dead in a ditch or lonely in a trailer,” Frost said.
For those who aim to bridge the gap between gays and Mormons, art has a big role to play in turning hearts and minds, Frost said.
“Art is one of the most powerful tools we have,” Frost said, “and comedy and parody is one of the most powerful parts of theater.”
Sean P. Means writes the Culture Vulture in daily blog form, at blogs.sltrib.com/vulture.
Charles Lynn Frost, who plays Sister Dottie in The Passion of Dottie S. Dixon: Second Helpings, has been released from the hospital following his illness with pneumonia caused by complications from two forms of flu (including that pesky H1N1!). He is recuperating, and expects to be fully recovered long before he appears on stage for the January performances.
One piece of advice the irrepressible Dottie dispenses early in Pygmalion’s revival of “The Passion of Sister Dottie S. Dixon” is, “We Mormons would do better if we stuck to what we do best: entertainment.” Charles Lynn Frost, Dottie’s alter ego, and Troy Williams obviously kept that in mind when they created the show. Whatever else you say about “Dottie,” it’s entertaining.
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