Series examines harms of now-illegal conversion therapy

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This article was published 23/12/2024 (382 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Conversion therapy — the practice of trying to forcibly change a person’s sexual orientation — was made illegal in Canada almost three years ago.

But the topic is hardly resolved for Winnipeg filmmaker Jonathan Lawrence, who takes up the subject for the second time in the series Alter Boys, a six-part drama currently streaming on CBC Gem. Though set in Northern Manitoba, the series was filmed in Winnipeg and surrounding areas — including Selkirk and Birds Hill — over a whirlwind schedule of 18 days.

“It was a very intense schedule to shoot six episodes, three days per episode in the end. It was very fast,” Lawrence says during a phone interview.

The series is a sequel of sorts. Lawrence first approached the subject in 2019 in a short film of the same name that followed two men furtively meeting on the outskirts of a conversion therapy camp trying to make sense of the situation in which they find themselves.

“We never see the camp. We don’t see the facilitators. We don’t even see many of the people attending. It’s just two characters through a series of meetings that they have through the wooded borders of this camp,” Lawrence says.

The short won Lawrence praise, including the Audience Choice Best Short award at the 2020 Reel Pride Film Festival, and Best Manitoba Film at the 2020 Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival.

That positive reception inspired him to expand the story to encompass not only more of the young men forced to attend the camp, but the authority figures behind the bucolic facility.

Lawrence, who wrote and directed the series, also stars in the role of Scotty, a young man trying to piece together his shattered existence in the wake of a fire that has torn through the camp. A formal investigation into the blaze spurs a more nuanced examination of the facility and the people navigating the inherent trauma of conversion therapy.

An honours graduate of the University of Winnipeg’s theatre and film department, Lawrence started out as an actor.

“I was articulating storytelling through being an actor,” he says.

But his storytelling vision expanded upon making his first feature film, When the World Was Flat, in 2015.

“After writing that project, it unlocked a wealth of ideas and concepts in storytelling. Finishing that really gave me the push to say: I can do this. And it took off from there,” he says.

Lawrence comes at the subject from an expansive perspective, not only as a queer man, but as a man of Cree and mixed European ancestry.

“I’m Cree from my mother’s side. I was very close with my mom and that heritage was the most prevalent in my life,” he says, adding discovering his sexuality was made easier by that heritage.

“I do remember growing up, when you’re looking for language in particular while you’re trying to discover who you are. I remember learning about being two-spirited at that time, thinking and reading about what that was. I’ve always felt quite welcome within my community,” he says.

While Lawrence admits he was never subjected to conversion therapy, he still remembers his own experience dealing with adversity.

“It largely goes back to the school to being at school, junior high in particular, and facing the bullying that goes on there,” he says. “It definitely was an experience that was quite encompassing it, that was quite relentless and it became such a big part of my life.

“Even though I’m out of it now, that kind of bullying, it lingers. It stays with you.”

Even so, he says the series also allows something positive.

“I saw it as an opportunity to showcase queer relationships, the dynamics evolving in different relationships, queer affection and intimacy. The adversity was kind of a funnel to showcase that, the beauty of staking claim to identity,” he says.

“But it’s important to acknowledge there is adversity out there in our world.”

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