Audience members at this Friday’s performance of Anthony Menchetti’s Gay Conversion School Drop Out get two for the price of one! Joining Anthony will be author and ex-gay activist Anthony Venn-Brown – the two have joined forces to provide a bit of Q&A after the show.

Gay Conversion School Drop Out is a hilarious stand-up show that takes us behind the scenes of what really happened to Anthony when his parents sent him to a Christian gay conversion school to rid him of his homosexuality. During the show we meet the colourful characters including Anthony’s fellow students, the hapless facilitators resisting temptation and, not least of all, the people who sent him to gay conversion school in the first place, his passionately evangelical, born-again German mother and his unconventional Roman Catholic Italian father.

Anthony describes the would-be conversion process as similar to a Quit meeting, like AA. Anthony recalls joking on his first day: “My name is Anthony Menchetti, I’m gay but I’m trying to quit. Down to one fag a day… have one every morning with my coffee!”

Anthony Menchetti star has been rising as a performer of some note at overseas comedy festivals as well as in Australia. Anthony maintains a regular position on Foxtel’s, Comedy Channel, as both featured comedian and presenter of documentaries and interviews.

Anthony Venn-Brown knows all about the ex-gay experience and on Friday November 21, for one night only, he’ll join Anthony Menchetti onstage to answer all your questions. Venn-Brown has become Australia’s leading authority on ‘ex-gay’ ministries and has shared his story on 60 Minutes, Channel 7’s Sunrise and Mornings With Kerri Anne. Last year he was named one of the Same Same 25 Most Influential Gay and Lesbian Australians.

Anthony Venn-Brown’s autobiography, A Life Of Unlearning details his struggle as a high profile preacher, to conform and overcome his homosexuality. For Anthony this included ‘ex-gay’ programs, exorcisms, 40 day fasts and 16 years of marriage. In the end Anthony says “it was like peddling on a stationary bike. After 22 years of furious peddling I was still gay.”

Anthony now works with GLBT people from Pentecostal and Evangelical backgrounds through his organisation Freedom 2 b[e].

The special performance with the two Anthonys is 9pm, Friday 21st November at The Factory Theatre, Enmore.

Read our review of Anthony Menchetti’s show here.