From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V2 #262 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Saturday, February 14 2004 Volume 02 : Number 262 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 05:50:50 +0000 From: "Andrew Hall" Subject: [AML] 2003 Mormon drama year-in-review 2003 saw several premieres by young Mormon playwrights, most notably the Off-off-Broadway September production of Erik Orton's musical Berlin. The play, previously workshoped at BYU, tells the story of the 1948 Berlin airlift through the eyes of German, American, and Russian characters. Reviewers praised Orton's music and the professional quality of the production, although they were less enthusiastic about the script. Matthew Murray of Talkin' Broadway said the performance was that of "a brightly polished, large-scale Broadway hit. The kind of confidence that this show has . . . can=92t help but be infectious. It's one of the few things that is, though -- just about everything else in Berlin has been seen before elsewhere. Think of this show as a cross between Les Miserables and Chess . . . The result is a show that works slavishly to inform and entertain, but does neither well enough to be captivating." The show garnered significant attention in New York, and there is hope for an Off-Broadway run. Orton previously co-authored the Church's Savior of the World pageant, and works as a production manager for Broadway touring companies. Behind Orton an even younger group of promising playwrights have begun to emerge from the campuses of Utah Valley. LeeAnne Hill Adams, a recent BYU student, for the second year in a row had a play set in the Soviet Union appear in the BYU theatrical season. Her 2003 play, Archipelago, reached for an epic scale in its depiction of the Soviet Gulag. It hung a variety of stories of prison camp atrocities, as well as a farcical satire of the treachery of Stalin's Politburo, on the framework plot devise of prisoners staging a production of Gogol's The Inspector General. Reviewers almost universally praised the cumulative power of the stories and the lyricism of the script, while also noting that too much was occurring on stage at once. Eric D. Snider in the Provo Herald wrote, "The play's structure allows for much theatricality and experimentation, and director Rodger Sorensen is more than happy to explore. He is particularly fond of the text's Brechtian elements, constantly reminding the audience they're watching a play, sometimes through conventional means like having no backstage space and letting characters talk to the audience, and sometimes through more unusual methods like introducing multi-media into the mix. We see a pro-Stalin propaganda commercial, and some scenes are broadcast on monitors by surveillance cameras set above the stage. At one point, through Terry Gilliam-style animation, Marx and Lenin engage in a heated ideological debate. Whether Sorensen's innovations add to Adams' text is open for debate . . . The gimmicks are cool, and maybe that's enough, but maybe they also distract from the play's basic, more soulful intentions." Adams has recently moved to California where she intends to work as a screenwriter. Another student-authored main stage BYU production was Tony Gunn's Smart Single Guys, a bitingly funny satire on student life, which played to an extended run of sold out shows in November. Gunn is currently working on a film version of the play. He also founded the Provo Fringe Festival, a forum for student-written plays which do not fit into the BYU system. One scheduled for 2004 is by Leslie Hart Gunn, Tony's wife, who BYU drama professor Eric Samuelson called one of the best young writers he has taught. Finally, the UVSC theater department presented Farewell to Eden, the debut work by student playwright Mahonri Stewart. It is a drawing room melodrama, laced with comically arch dialogue, which tells the story of an upper-class mid-19th century British household upended by the preaching of Brigham Young and John Taylor. Rather then focus on the Mormon characters, however (the apostles appear on-stage for only five minutes), Stewart uses Mormonism as a devise to expose the hypocrisy and cruelty of the British social and economic structure. Eric Samuelsen commented, "There's genuine wit and bite in the dialogue, and the characters are sharply drawn . . . a very powerful and impressive debut." Farewell to Eden was chosen to participate in the prestigious American College Theater Festival regional competition in February 2004, with an opportunity to move on to the finals in Washington DC. Moving on to the next older generation, Neil LaBute continues to enjoy the strongest, and most iconoclastic, reputation among LDS playwrights. January saw the final weeks of the Broadway run of his 9/11-centered drama The Mercy Seat, and the scripts of both that play and his 2002 work The Distance From Here were published in 2003. LaBute's film version of his 2001 play The Shape of Things was released early in the year. Productions of LaBute works occurred all over the world in 2003: bash: latter-day plays in Paris, The Shape of Things in New Zealand, and The Mercy Seat at the prestigious Dutches Theater in Berlin. LaBute did have one new work in 2003, a one-act titled Merge, which was produced at the University of Miami Summer Shorts Festival. Perhaps most notably for the LDS audience, the Plan B Theater Company in Salt Lake City staged a production of bash, his one major play which includes Mormon characters, and the first major production of a LaBute play in Utah since he left BYU. It received strong reviews in the Utah newspapers, and Ivan Lincoln of the Deseret News listed is as one of the best dramas produced in Utah in the year. The biggest story in LDS theater in 2002 was the establishment in Orem, Utah of the Nauvoo Theatrical Society, a dramatic company dedicated to producing Mormon-themed plays. Early in 2003 the company staged two works: The Way We're Wired, Eric Samuelsen's comic tale of single Mormons, and Stones, Scott Bronson's moving interpretation of two Biblical stories. Both productions were revivals of recent AML drama prize-winning works, and both received strong praise for the scripts, staging, and acting. For example, D. Michael Martindale on AML-List called Stones "a quintessential piece of LDS drama that does what all pieces of LDS drama should aspire to . . . a masterful example of how vital art is to one's emotional, intellectual, and spiritual development." Unfortunately both productions drew relatively small audiences. In the Spring financial pressures and difficulties with municipal fire officials forced the company to leave its Center Street Theater in Orem, and cancel the rest of the season. The company is currently reorganizing, and is planning a seven-play 2004-2005 season, beginning in August. The September 11th tragedy was the setting of Reed McColm's 2002 play Hole in the Sky, in which he imagined what might have occurred among a group of people stuck on an upper floor of the World Trade Center from the time of the first impact until the tower's collapse. The original BYU-Idaho production ran to sold-out houses, and was awarded an AML drama prize. The Eastern Oregon University theater department produced the work in November, and like Farewell to Eden it was chosen to participate in a regional competition of the American College Theater Festival. For two months in the Spring the Village Theatre near Seattle staged Michael McLean and Kevin Kelly's refashioned musical The Ark, which had come off a very successful run at Utah's Thanksgiving Point in 2002. A comic retelling of the story of Noah and the ark, the show received fairly good reviews from the Seattle newspapers, which praised its humor and music, while criticizing the sections which strained to be inspirational, particularly the slow ending. Both reviewers noted that despite their reservations, the play appeared to be a big hit with the audiences. The Bountiful Performing Arts Center in Utah staged three works by an older generation of LDS authors, Thomas Rogers' Huebener, Dale White's Saints and Strangers, and the late Ralph Rogers' Christmas musical Joseph and Mary: A Love Story. Huebener, which tells the true story of three Mormon teens in Hamburg, Germany, who defied the Nazi party by distributing illegal anti-Hitler pamphlets in 1942, was a ground-breaking piece of LDS drama when it was first produced at BYU in 1976. Ivan Lincoln rated the new production, directed by Rogers, as one of the state's best dramas of the year, and said it was an "intense, emotionally moving drama . . . an important piece of literature which deserves a broad audience." Saints and Strangers is a new musical drama about the Pilgrims' voyage on the Mayflower. White is a veteran Hollywood actor and crew member, whose career goes back to a role in the Jack Benny Show in the 1950s. Two works based on true stories of homosexuals within Utah Mormon culture were staged in 2003. Steven Fales has performed versions of his one-man, autobiographical show Confessions of a Mormon Boy (also known as X'd) in several cities for the last three years. The monologue, which includes comedy, singing, and dancing, tells the story of Fales' struggle with and eventual acceptance of his same-sex attraction, resulting in his divorce and excommunication. In 2003 the show appeared in Las Vegas, Miami, and Portland, and a version was published in the December 2003 issue of Sunstone. An off-Broadway run, directed by the Tony-award winner Jack Hofsiss, was scheduled for September 2003 at the Acorn Theatre, but has been postponed. Meanwhile in Utah, James Rapier, the artistic director of the Plan-B Theater Company, created A Peculiar People, a docu-drama about being gay and/or HIV Positive in Utah society, which played at the Rose Wagner Theater. Rapier borrowed the forms used in "The Laramie Project", with actors reading or acting out real-life testimonials. Claudia Harris in the Salt Lake Tribune wrote "(the play) is never strident or maudlin . . . Rapier manages to create a moving but disturbing account of Utah attitudes." Two pieces of religious-themed dramatic music debuted in Utah County in 2003: Robert Millet=92s oratorio Passage of Glory, which told the story of Joseph Smith and the restoration, and Meredith Ryan Taylor's Book of Mormon-themed opera Abinidai. Finally, two well-known figures in the world of LDS drama passed away in 2003, Ruth Hale and Gordon Jump. Ruth Hale and her husband Nathan, who died in 1994, founded the Glendale Centre Theatre in Southern California in the 1950s, and then in 1985 the Hale Center Theater in South Salt Lake City, which has since grown into one of the largest cultural institutions in Utah. The Hales wrote over 80 plays, most of them light, family-friendly comedies. Gordon Jump first became interested in the LDS Church while acting at the Hale's Glendale Center Theatre as a young man. Jump is well-known from his many television roles, most famously in WKRP in Cincinnati. Jump also co-wrote at least one piece of LDS drama, the 1973 musical Open the Door (with Michael Wuergler). Andrew Hall Denton, TX - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 06:05:53 +0000 From: "Andrew Hall" Subject: [AML] 2003 Mormon Short Story bibliography Short Stories Allred, Lee. Our Gunther Likes to Dig. Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. 27 (July 2003). Baker, Virginia Ellen. On the Last Day, God Created. Asimov's (June 1995). Reprinted in Irreantum 4:3, Autumn 2002. Bell, M. Shayne. Anomalous Structures of My Dreams. Fantasy and Science Fiction. January 2003. Story of a man dying of a plague. Good versimilitude, one reviewer said. Bell's partner died of AIDS in 2002. Card, Orson Scott. First Meetings. Tor, August. Four novellas from the Enderverse, one new. The Polish Boy about Ender's father, Teacher=92s Pest (new) about Ender's father and mother, The Investment Counselor about Ender and Jane, and the original short story. - ------, Yazoo Queen. Legends II. Robert Silverberg, ed. An Alvin story, he meets Jim Bowie and Abe Lincoln, prequel to The Crystal City. - -----, Inventing Lovers on the Phone. Stars. Janis Ian, ed. Daw Books, August. Contains stories based on the songs of Janis Ian. - -----, In the Dragon=92s House. The Dragon Quintet. Marvin Kay, ed. Science Fiction Book Club. Not available in stores. One of five novellas. A gothic story set in contemporary suburbia, in which dragons live in the wiring of houses. Chai, Nathan K. Driven. Dialogue 36:2, Summer 2003. Vietnam sentry. Decker, C. D. (Cynthia). Monster Lie. Irreantum 4:4, Winter 2002-2003. Children's story. Evenson, Brian. The Ex-Father. Salt Hill #14, Summer 2003. - -----, The Brotherhood of Mutilation. Earthling, Aug. Limited edition (300) chapbook/novella. A detective who lost his hand is drawn into a secret amputation cult to solve a crime. Evenson also published several literary studies and translations works recently. Joined the Brown faculty (Rhode Island) in 2003. Involved in a program there to support writers in foreign countries facing freedom of expression problems. Article about him in the hip new journal, The Believer, May 2003, called, The Bad Mormon. Feehan, Christine. Dark Descent. In the anthology The Only One. Leisure Books, 2003. Fantasy/romance. Glenn, Sharlee Mullins. Idaho Love Song. Irreantum 4:3, Autumn 2002. Won 1st prize in Irreantum's 2002 fiction contest. In verse, about an old farmer who has fallen and broken his hip. Harrell, Jack. Flight. Irreantum 4:4, Winter 2002-2003. Short-short, a woman who feels left behind. - ------, The Lone and Dreary World. Dialogue 36.1, Spring 2003. About Adam and Eve after the fall. Jackson, Brian. Jabulane. Irreantum 4:3, Autumn 2002. Missionaries in South Africa. Won second prize in Irreantum's 2002 fiction contest. BYU grad student. Jones, Helen Walker. Saturday Evening, Sunday Afternoon. Dialogue 36:2, Summer 2003. Good story about two fringe Mormons dating. LaBute, Neil. Los Feliz. Zoetrope. Winter 2003, 7:4. Littke, Lael. The Day We Lost Max. Irreantum 4:4, Winter 2002-2003. Originally published in Ladies' Home Journal, Oct. 1969, and has been reprinted many times and included in several textbooks. Loveridge, Arnold V. The Lesson. Sunstone #126, March. 1999 Starstone winner. Funny little story about a damaged goods standards lesson gone awry. Peterson, Joe. The Year of the Cicada. Sunstone, Oct. 2003, #129. Interim Academic Vice President at Dixie State College. 2000 Moonstone. Mormon man meets mystical/drunk Indian. Peterson, Levi. Brothers. Dialogue 36:2, Summer 2003. Great story about estranged step-brothers climbing a mountain. Peterson, Todd Robert. Redeeming the Dead. Sunstone, Dec. 2002, #125. 1998 Brooke and D. K. Brown contest winner. Set in African. - -----. Now and at the Hour of Our Death. Dialogue 36:2, Summer 2003. South American man struggles with his own violence, testimony. Plummer, Louise. Bliss at the Burger Bar. Irreantum 4:4, Winter 2002-2003. A part of A Dance For Three cut from the novel, but published as a story in No Easy Answers: Short Stories about Teenagers Making Tough Decisions, ed. Don Gallo, Delacorte, 1997. Rosenbaum, Karen. Havesu. Dialogue 36:2, Summer 2003. Sander, Brett Alan. The Saint Ann=92s Review. 4:2, Summer/Fall 2003 (it might be a poem). Spencer, Darrell. Excerpt from Three Jacks, a novel. Dialogue 36:2, Summer 2003. - -----, Death Care World Expo, Reno, Nevada. American Literary Review, 14:1, Spring 2003. - -----, The Devil, You Say. Midamerican Review. 23:2, Spring 2003. Thayer, Douglas. Wolves. Dialogue 36:2, Summer 2003. A Provo boy traveling as a hobo in 1940 meets the very worst and best of humanity. Powerful. Thompson, Charles. Grandpa and the Petrified Oysters. Dialogue 35:4, Winter 2002 (June 2003). Nice story based on the author's childhood in the Compton area. Van Wagoner, Robert Hodgson. A Good Sign. Dialogue 36:2, Summer 2003. Great story about a woman and her recently brain-damaged husband. Weyland, Jack. Everyone Gets Married in the End. Horizon, Aug. Collection of stories. Woodbury, Katherine. Battle Tactics. Cicada, Jan/Feb 2003. - -----, Thin, Scarlet Line. Irreantum 5:1, Spring 2003. Raheb and Joshua's army. Young, Darlene. Rissa Orders Cheesecake. Irreantum 4:3, Autumn 2002. Third prize in Irreantum's 2002 contest. Good family story. Young, Margaret Blair. Sanctuaries. Dialogue 36:2, Summer 2003. Poetry Swenson, Paul. Iced at the Ward, Burned at the Stake. Signature, 2003. Andrew Hall - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 00:28:23 -0700 From: owner-aml-list@lists.xmission.com Subject: [none] > From: Christopher Bigelow To: "'aml-list@lists.xmission.com'" Subject: [AML] (SLTrib) R-rating for _Saints and Soldiers_ Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 16:17:30 -0700 Sender: owner-aml-list@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: aml-list LDS-genre war film marred with an 'R' By Michael Yount The Salt Lake Tribune Filmmakers Ryan Little and Adam Abel set out to overhaul perceptions of LDS cinema with their upcoming release "Saints and Soldiers." Their hope= was the movie would break out from the fledgling genre and achieve mainstream appeal. That hope is now a necessity, since the Motion Picture Association of America assigned the film an "R" rating and later denied an appeal. The rating probably cuts out the Mormon niche audience when "Saints and Soldiers" is released later year. LDS leaders urge members to avoid films rated R, usually given for excessive violence, sex and language. The film is based on the Jeffrey Scott novel and set in World War II Europe. Shot in Utah, "Saints" follows a handful of Allied soldiers who escape the Malmedy Massacre in December 1944. "We wanted to tell a compelling and engaging story and one that was credible, but didn't make violence the star," said Abel, the movie's 27-year-old producer. But violence -- the film has no nudity or foul language -- was the reason for the rating. Little, who directed, and Abel were shocked at the MPAA decision. The filmmakers and their distributor, Utah-based Excel Entertainment Group, researched other war films, especially PG-13-rated "Pearl Harbor." "We even kind of pulled back [the violence] to give ourselves a= buffer," said Little, 32. Although they can re-edit the film and appeal to the MPAA again, the= duo vows alterations will only be made "if it's something that we can change without affecting the integrity and power of the film that hundreds of people have fallen in love with at film festivals." The success of "Saints" on the festival circuit is a promising step toward distancing itself from the likes of "The R.M." and "The Singles Ward." The film scored numerous audience choice selections in 2003 and the Grand Prize at the Heartland Film Festival. The filmmakers insist the success with non-Mormon audiences is because "Saints" simply isn't a "Mormon movie. It's a movie with a Mormon [character] in it," Little said. Little made the choice to keep the Latter-day Saints qualities less overt. The movie's lone Mormon character is portrayed more subtly, he said, and references to the faith aren't necessary to the story. Final festival screeings of "Saints and Soldiers" came last month at= the LDS Film Festival in Orem, prior to the MPAA's decision. Little said of the 400 mostly Mormon viewers, only four figured it was worthy of an R-rating. Still, that pesky label keeps LDS viewers out of theaters and is a potential headache for Excel, which also distributed Mormon films "God's Army," "Charly" and others. Excel President Jeff Simpson was confident a PG-13 rating was forthcoming. "We stand behind the movie," Simpson said, though he added that an R-rating would force the company to think about "the right way to= distribute in this market." myount@sltrib.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 00:29:27 -0700 From: owner-aml-list@lists.xmission.com Subject: [none] > From: Christopher Bigelow To: "'aml-list@lists.xmission.com'" Subject: [AML] Comment on _Napoleon Dynamite_ Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 16:55:27 -0700 Sender: owner-aml-list@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: aml-list From Salt Lake City Weekly: The only truly transcendent experience I had at Sundance came straight= outta BYU, yo. Jared Hess's misfit comedy Napoleon Dynamite took life for one outcast Southern Idaho high school student and turned it into an explosion of huge laughs. Lots of the big-city critics hated the film, convinced that it was full of condescending cheap shots towards its characters. But the guys from the big media centers always seem to clench up when stylized regional comedy comes their way-About Schmidt, Fargo-perhaps convinced that they'll be considered insensitive if they admit to finding any oddballs funny except New York or Los Angeles oddballs. Screw 'em-it may be completely episodic, but it's an absolute riot. (Scott Renshaw, Feb. 5, 2004, "After Sundown") - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 00:39:09 -0700 From: Melissa Proffitt Subject: Re: [AML] AML Conference Inquiry On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 18:44:11 +0000, Dennis Warr wrote: >I've heard snippets that the AML Conference will be March 5th and 6th. >= The >locations have been announced. However, what are the times and >which=20 session will the awards be given? Also, is this casual dress >or more of= a=20 >formal affair? Thanks. We are finalizing the programs for Friday and Saturday right now, and the full schedule will soon be available at the AML website (www.aml-online.org). The Friday session runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; on Saturday, it goes from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Registration will begin half an hour before the first session each day. Casual attire is just fine. The awards are given during the business meeting, which will be held on Saturday after lunch at 1 p.m. The presidential address by Gideon Burton will also be during this session. =46or information on preregistration and costs for different sessions, = please visit www.aml-online.org/events/aml2004.htm. We are accepting online prepayments and email preregistrations only (no snail mail payments = please), but anyone is welcome to show up at the door that day. The exception is = for the Saturday luncheon, which must be registered for in advance. Any questions about the event can also be directed to me personally at Melissa@Proffitt.com. Melissa Proffitt AML President-Elect - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V2 #262 ******************************