Everyone knows him as Emmett, the resident queen of the gay clique on “Queer as Folk,” but openly gay actor Peter Paige is in town playing a very different part in Eden Lane. The play, which premieres Aug. 17 at the La Jolla Playhouse, tells the story of a New York family that makes the move to the suburbs hoping to reconstruct their lives. Paige takes on the role of Timothy, the “long-suffering gay best friend” of the family matriarch, May.

“Timothy is a little depressed,” Paige says about his onstage persona. “He is a little bit heartbroken. He is a fairly unsuccessful actor who is trying to find his place in the world. He feels great love for this family, but he doesn’t feel a part of it. He feels on the periphery and he’s trying to stake out his own life.”

It’s not the typical play that Paige finds himself drawn to.

“By genre I guess you would define it as a kitchen sink drama,” Paige says. “I’m not usually drawn to realism on the stage, but the writing is so brilliant and so lovely and so complex that I was compelled; I felt like I had to be part of the play.”

Paige, who first dreamt of a career in entertainment when he was just six, says that he grew up onstage and loves live performances, but for the past three years he has enjoyed being on a series and going back to work “reconnecting with the family” as he continues to explore Emmett on “Queer as Folk.” Ever the perfectionist, Paige says that even though he is playing the same character night after night in Eden Lane he is constantly exploring Timothy and learning more about him.

“You have to find the evolution on stage,” Paige says about live performance. “You have to continue to investigate the material on a different level every night.… There is always exploration to be done. One of the things I love about my work is that it’s never perfect. It drives me crazy but it’s never perfect.”

And even though it is a gay character, playing Timothy is a sharp contrast from his role on TV as Emmett, who he describes as an effeminate gay man who actually likes himself.

“That’s really unheard of in the history of TV and film,” Paige notes. “The more effeminate a gay man is, the more miserable he has to be and the more likely he is to die. So to be able to play someone who happens to be a big old queen and happens to think he is pretty groovy is really a privilege.”

Reality TV is starting to break down that stereotype with the success of shows like “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” with its rampaging divas making over straight men, but Paige thinks that there is still some resistance among the gay community to embracing effeminate characters.

“I bristle at the idea that effeminate gay men and representations of effeminate gay men are somehow less valuable than masculine representations of gay men,” he explains. “I think that’s internalized homophobia. I think that that’s a self-loathing in the community that big nelly queens are less valuable than big straight- acting ones. Why? Why are you so worried that there is a nelly gay man on television? Why does that bother you?”

Paige says that in the grand scheme of things he falls somewhere in between his effeminate television counterpart and the clichéd “straight acting” notion that gay men seem to be embracing.

“Of course there are ways we cross over,” Paige says about Emmett. “I don’t think I am open as he is. I don’t think I am as fun as he is. I think I am a fun guy, but I think I am more grounded than he is. I love playing him and I learn a lot from him. I think he is really an amazing person.”

Paige adds that he finds pieces of every character on “Queer as Folk” that he can identify with — even young Justin, who is coming out and trying to find out where he wants to belong in the community.

“It’s a very odd right of passage,” Paige, who started coming out at age 15, says. “Nobody else really has to go through it. You grow up and you discover something in yourself and then you have to go out and seek out and find other people who have that same characteristic. That doesn’t typically happen in any other subculture.”

One of the ways that many young men try to fit in is by getting involved in the party scene, and that was an issue that “Queer as Folk” addressed this year through Emmett’s on-screen relationship with his boyfriend Ted, who fell into depression and ended up addicted to crystal meth.

“We were doing a scene … where Emmett begs Ted to stop,” Paige recalled, talking about the honesty of the story and how it goes beyond being a gay issue. “One of the women on our crew ran up to me with tears streaming down her face and she said ‘I want you to know I was married to a heroine addict and that scene could have been taken verbatim from my life; everything about that was right, everything about that storyline was right,’ and that meant the world to me.”

It not only made for good drama, but also put a spotlight on what Paige considers one of the biggest problems in the gay community.

“It continues to be one of the great plagues of the community,” Paige says. “I think in the very near future the only damage to the gay community will be from within the gay community itself. Obviously we’re not there yet … but I think the tide is rolling so steadily that, clearly within our lifetime we are going to see a time that we are fully integrated into society.”

He sees integration and acceptance in society as being key to helping the gay community fight some of its own demons.

“My hope is that with that integration will come greater amounts of self love and self understanding so that people aren’t driven to addiction to the levels they are now, because it’s clearly a very big problem.”

Paige enjoys the perspective from outside of the U.S. that filming “Queer as Folk” in Canada provides.

“It’s amazing that a country that is so much like us can be light years ahead of us in certain ways,” Paige says about the recent legalization of gay marriage in Canada. “It’s just not even that big of a deal up there. That news was not earth shattering to Canadians. I mean some were excited and some were flipped out, but not like what would happen here.”

For more of Peter Paige, catch him in Eden Lane at the La Jolla Playhouse now through Sept. 14.