From simple, superficial ideologies such as the perfect height, the perfect weight, the perfect hair color (you name it, someone out there is stressing over it), to the more complex dilemma of one’s sexuality, learning to love and accept ourselves for who we really are is the most important (not to mention the hardest) “task” we must complete in our lives.

These issues are ones we must come to terms with before being able to move forward with our lives. How can it be possible to be truly happy if we are struggling with the fact that we do not look like the models in the pages of Vogue Homme or W?

Now imagine this: Your name is Roy and you have been married to Irma for 25 years. You have two children. You live in the Midwest. You are a respected member of the church and the community. One day, while at marriage counseling with the pastor, you confess that you are a women trapped in a man’s body and would like a sex change. Now, how is that for complicated?

This is the scenario played out in Diversionary Theater’s Looking for Normal. The cast of nine is led by John Rosen as Roy and Terri Park as Irma. Their children are played by Natasha Feldman and Lance Rogers. Roy’s parents are played by Kate Hewitt and Duane Leake. Teanne Horn, William Tanner and Gerard Maxwell complete the cast.

The play follows the entire family through Roy’s journey. As the story unfolds, wife, son and daughter must each form a new relationship with this person at the center of their lives. As director Lisa Berger explains, “The play is also a study in the process of loss. The family feels Roy’s transition as if it were Roy’s death – they feel and literally see the ‘loss’ of him. The play mirrors these stages – shock, denial, bargaining, guilt, anger – and finally acceptance.”

Berger notes, “As we watch Roy’s family deal with his decision, we begin to see that feeling ‘normal’ is something we are all struggling to find.”

Looking for Normal author Jan Anderson has an incredible track record. She wrote the Emmy-nominated “1961” segment of HBO’s If These Walls Could Talk 2 and wrote and directed The Baby Dance, which won a Peabody Award. She also wrote the acclaimed HBO movie The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom for which she won an Emmy and a Writers Guild Award. Her theater works include The Baby Dance, Defying Gravity, Food Shelter and Smart Choices for the New Century.

“In my work now, I’m interested in exploring love, and when you love someone (if you indeed found your soul mate) how much could you bear them changing on you?” Anderson told PlanetOut.com. “Do you love their physical body? Their gender? Their heart? Their mind?”

If you’ve ever wondered about any of these questions, or if it is indeed you that feels that you have to change, how would you and the people around you react?

It is exactly this theme that Looking for Normal explores, placing us within a family that has a very real decision to make: Judge or love someone for who they are, or for who we want them to be.

Looking for Normal plays Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, June 5, at 2:00 p.m., through June 11.