A flood, a wolf, and gays: playwright Tim Maddock wants people to think about the discrimination he encountered after Katrina, particularly toward a dog named Pete.

When actor Tim Maddock saw the r television images of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, he decided to travel from his home in Los Angeles back to the place where he had first embraced his gay identity on a memorable spring break 14 years earlier. A lifelong dog owner, Maddock volunteered for a nonprofit group that searches for pets left behind in disasters.

Now on the first anniversary of his search-and-rescue mission, Maddock is featured in a play based on his experiences in New Orleans. A major story line in Because They Have No Words, which runs through October 1 at the Lounge Theater in Los Angeles, traces Maddock's battle to save an animal that is half wolf and half dog found wandering an empty street. Another volunteer wanted to shun the hybrid, seeing it as unnatural, but Maddock wouldn't hear of it.

"Here is this animal whom people made judgments upon and assumptions based on ignorance," Maddock says. "It didn't seem to be so much of a stretch that that happens to gay people too."

The wolf-dog named Pete now lives in a sanctuary called Full Moon Farm in North Carolina run by a woman who happens to have a gay son. "Pete literally had obstacles from the get-go," Maddock says, "and I was looking at him and seeing that he's just a dog."

To bring his experiences to the stage, Maddock collaborated with his friend Lotti Louise Pharriss. Their production not only explores prejudice but also experiments with gender and racial stereotypes, casting women as men and white actors as black characters. "So much of my experience revolved around stereotypes and the ideas people have of whom they're dealing with," Maddock says.

Volunteering in New Orleans not only inspired Maddock but also changed him, friends say. "He seemed stronger to me, but he also seemed sadder," says Andrea Sumpter, whom Maddock visited in his native Kansas after leaving New Orleans. "I don't think you can go through something like that without being profoundly changed. He didn't just write a check. He went to ground zero and really made a difference."