Majd Murad in "Blood Fruit"

My name is Majd Murad (really Murad-al-Shaikh). I am a gay, ex-Catholic, Iraqi bear cub (for those who know what that means), and I wrote a play about how I came out to my Catholic Iraqi family called Blood Fruit. I’m an Aries, but I didn’t necessarily write this show for myself, though it has been very fruitful for me (yes, I am cheesy).

This all started back in high school. I was the only “out” gay boy, and it was rough! I joined the theater thinking there would be other gays there. I was wrong — there were no out gay boys. But I did find I loved to act, and thanks to the newfound confidence that naturally comes from being onstage, I began to be more sociable and tell lots of stories about my past and the things that happened to me along the way.

Majd Murad

This continued, and all of these stories became something of a tradition among my friends when I was in high school and college. There was the Bobby story, about an affair with my best friend from middle school that lasted into college and ended when a crazy girl convinced him to sleep with her, which got her pregnant. There was the story of how I came to this country and how my parents didn’t tell us when we left Iraq that we wouldn’t be going back until we arrived in Jordan. And the one about the terrible car accident that gave me the scar on my arm and a time I had to push myself around in a wheelchair with my left foot, because both arms and my right foot were broken.

And then some more serious things happened. Things I’d rather not reveal in this article (because they are in my play). When I shared those stories with my friends, I kept hearing about how inspiring they were. How I needed to share them publicly. Time and again I heard this until I finally agreed I should. But how? A book? I wouldn’t know where to begin! But the answer fell on my lap… literally. On my laptop one day was an email from Brenda Varda, a good friend and colleague from UC Riverside where I went to college, announcing a workshop she was hosting called “Autobiographical Solo Performance Writing” taught by Eric Trules, who normally teaches at USC. Now that sounded more like it. I am an actor, so let me write a play about it!

Majd Murad in "Blood Fruit"

The challenge then became which stories? What’s my theme? I have hundreds of stories that I think would be interesting enough to hear, but how do I tie them all together? Guided by Trules, I decided the most dramatic theme in my life was my family’s reaction to the news that I batted for the other team. That alone shaped so much of my life, so I had to talk about it. And what I wove in was more on my gay experience — my first time, online dating, guilt over sexuality, etc.

It was not easy. There were tears, there were bad fifth drafts, there was financial trouble, there was lack of motivation. That last one was taken care of by Debra Ehrhardt, who frequented the workshops. Her own one-woman show Jamaica Farewell has been so successful that she became a role model for me. Aside from that, she kept telling me how much she believed in my show and just knew it was something an audience would want to see. I got similar advice from my close personal friend Eddy Gutierrez, who is something of a spiritual leader for gay men. He pushed me because he thought my show would benefit my gay brothers out there.

Majd Murad

Eddy was right. After each and every performance, I realized I didn’t really write this show for myself. My audience came up after each performance saying I made them cry! Me! They started sharing their own stories, they related their own experiences. It became this beautiful heartwarming Oprah episode every time I left to greet the audience. Of course, it’s not the same for every audience member, but even if only one person learned something or felt something because of this show, all the struggle in writing and rehearsing it was worthwhile.

I’m on the other side of that now. Blood Fruit has received amazing audience reviews and had a successful run at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, where it premiered. All I want to do now is keep perfecting the story and performing it so that more and more can experience the catharsis previous audiences had. And the fact that I’m making lemonade out of the lemons of my life is a nice way to live, I gotta say.

Blood Fruit, in association with Spoken Word Festival. Opens Dec. 3. Plays Saturdays at 3 pm on Dec. 10 and 17; Jan. 14, 21 and 28. Tickets: $15 (Goldstar); $30 at dorr. Lounge 2 Theatre, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd. Hollywood, CA 90038.http://www.goldstar.com/los-angeles/events?q=blood+fruit

Majd Murad is a performer, a writer, a director, an educator, and a maskmaker (http://majdmurad.com/masks). He was born in Baghdad, Iraq, but grew up in Redlands,  then went to school at UC Riverside where he graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Theater. He recently moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting and the life of his one-man show, Blood Fruit.