At age 7, David Holthouse was raped by a high school quarterback while the boys' parents chatted upstairs. Decades later, UAA students are staging his story.

The experience haunted David as he grew up in Anchorage, left for college in California and worked as a journalist in Denver. But the simmering mental pain flooded back when his mother, unaware of the incident, blithely reported that David's rapist had also landed in Denver, and wasn't that great? Yoked by memory, his only thought was to kill his bogeyman. As Holthouse later wrote in the Anchorage Press, "I decided to murder him. I bought a gun, and a silencer, and I made a plan."

David first shared his childhood rape and deadly fixation in Denver's alt-weekly, Westword, in 2004 (the article reprinted in Anchorage later). In 2011, David appeared on NPR's This American Life in an episode that caught the ear of a New York City theatre rep. Next came the play — Stalking the Bogeyman — which ran off-Broadway in 2014, and will have its West Coast premiere at UAA this April. The play stages the entire experience — from the incident in Anchorage to an anguished confrontation between the two in Denver — into one relentless, demanding, necessary production. No intermission, no relief. David's deeply personal story has vast implications in his home state; according to a 2014 federal study, Alaska's rate of child sexual assault is six times the national average.

"It's not normally common conversation around the coffee table," said Dan Anteau, B.A. '96, chair of UAA's theatre department. The play, he hopes, will change that. "It is difficult, but it's a real necessary dialogue."

That's a large reason why UAA earned the script over the state's many theatre companies. UAA departments collaborated on an awareness campaign in the rollout to opening night, and each production has an immediate "talkback" between the cast and audience, joined by a rotation of psychology faculty, abuse advocates and even David himself.

This diverse community involvement has defined the production all semester. Scriptwriter Markus Potter flew from New York to lead workshops, psychology faculty advised throughout rehearsals and David himself met the cast, an incredibly unique experience for the student actors.

The play leans heavily on real life and recorded conversations, but David informed the cast of distinct differences. Devin Frey, who plays David, asked him directly if he'd found the closure evidenced in the script. "There was no ray of sunshine, he didn't feel better about [the confrontation]," Devin noted of the break between script and reality. "In the play, David will get closure... but I have to find it."

Chris Evans, who plays the Bogeyman, also has a challenge — imbuing a child rapist with compassion. "If we just treated him as this stock villain, there's not as much impact," he said. By calling the abuser 'the Bogeyman,' the script indicates these hidden demons could be anyone (though not named in the script, David has since identified his rapist in a wrenching 2015 Anchorage Press article). "A big part of the show is showing that these are your neighbors, your sons and your brothers that can commit these types of crimes."

It's heavy material for a student production. "It is a hard show to produce. It is going to be an emotional roller coaster sometimes during rehearsals," noted director Brian Cook. "Everything we do in the play is simulated but it's still, for the actor in the moment, real."

Within the close quarters of UAA's blackbox theater, it may feel real for the audience, too. That's why the director included nightly talkbacks, it's why psychology students will survey audiences to monitor change in impressions and it's why art professor Herminia Din will install a collaborative piece in the lobby for release and expression. UAA's production will harness resources from multiple departments to make sure the conversation continues after the house lights rise.

Abuse is a statewide issue, and the six-student cast will tour their production this summer. With a focused publicity campaign, citywide partnerships and a traveling schedule, this show far exceeds any recent production at UAA.

"This role is a huge deal for me," Devin noted. "I do believe theatre is an instrument for social change and you need projects like this to really push it forward ... That's a challenge I'm excited for."

Stalking the Bogeyman runs Friday-Sunday from April 1-24. It will appear in Seward, Homer, Palmer and Fairbanks this summer, and will conclude at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez.

All alumni receive a 10 percent discount on all UAA theatre productions if they buy online at www.UAATix.com and use the code "UAAlumni."