Rings of the Tree tells the story of Diana Applesong, a Victorian woman who has experienced tragedy after tragedy in her life. So eventually, after dealing with so much grief, she cloisters herself and her servants into her mansion, essentially cutting herself off from the world. However, a group of explorers stumble upon her secretive existence and set off a chain of events that places her face to face with that which she is most afraid of… love.

“She has experienced a lot of loss and pain in her past,” said Jaclyn Hales who is playing the lead role of Diana Applesong, “Her default reaction is living like a porcelain doll. Everything is beautiful and protected on the outside, but inside she’s nothing… she’s numb. She has nothing left to give… or so she thinks.” Hales is recently making headway in her career with starring roles in films like the upcoming Unicorn City, but she took a break from her film pursuits in LA to work on this show, for which she has expressed a lot of fondness and excitement. “As far as everyone here in the Utah audience, it’s going to be innovative,” said Hales, “It’s super creative and will keep the audiences’ attention and awe factor at a high the whole time.”

Rings of the Tree is not a new story to Utah audiences. It was originally produced at Utah Valley University to very positive audience and critical reaction, and Stewart’s screenplay version of the story won first place in last year’s LDS Film Festival’s Screenplay Competition (which screenplay Imminent Catharsis Media has optioned and plans on making a feature film, once funding is in place). This production of the play, however, is very different than the one that premiered at UVU. Zion Theatre Company and Imminent Catharsis Media are taking a multimedia approach with the show, meaning that in staging it they are also incorporating film and other mediums. The production has required several film shoots, the composition of original music, the use of projection, digital devices and theatre magic.

“This version of the script is much closer to the screenplay than the original stage play,” said playwright Stewart, a Utah native who is currently getting his MFA is Dramatic Writing at Arizona State University. “There is a lot more emphasis on the visual element, the spectacle, the magic. In the past, I’ve focused on language. This time around, although that beautiful language is still a vital component, yet I tried to make room for spectacle… for visions.”

Utah film actor, Danor Gerald, is taking one of the starring roles in the multimedia production, but is also one of the show’s producers. Along with the production’s director Jyllian Petrie, they are creating the show’s film elements and creative multimedia effects. “Rings of the Tree pushes the creative boundaries of theatre, and narrative cinema.  Zion Theatre Company and Imminent Catharsis Arts & Media are working together to develop this groundbreaking work of art,” said Gerald, “After doing so many movies in Utah, this project excites me as an actor, and as a producer because it brings me back to my roots in classical live theatre.  That’s my first love, plus I get to integrate my new zeal for digital cinema and web-based media to tell this story.”

As indicated, there is a digital, intermedia element to the show which will surprise audiences. “We’ve all been warned at the movies or theatre to turn off our mobile phones and silence our devices,” said Gerald, “But in this show we expect and encourage the audience to bring your web-enabled tablets and smartphones.  Bring your headphones, and a splitter for your date.  You will want to take the chances we give to you to use them… We aren’t using these as gimmicks.  We are making creative technical choices to deliver each part of the story in the most valuable and enjoyable way.”

Director Petrie has both been invigorated and challenged by the production. “It’s been an eye opening experience. I’ve worked for years in theatre and years in film, but I’ve never had to do both at the same time. It’s been very difficult, but very rewarding, but we’re doing the impossible—we’ve basically filmed a movie and rehearsed a play in a matter of weeks! But I’m very excited, because when it all comes together, it’s going to be mind blowing.”

The Off Broadway Theater is located at 272 South Main Street, Salt Lake City. The Grove Theater is located at 20 South Main Street, Pleasant Grove. All performances of the show will be at 7pm. Tickets are $12 for adults and $10 for students/seniors. Tickets for the Salt Lake performances can be purchased at http://theobt.org/ or by calling (801) 355-4628. Tickets for the Pleasant Grove performances can be purchased at www.ziontheatrecompany.com .

At one point I had the opinion that Orestes Bean’s Corianton (1902) was the first Mormon play produced (I do know of an unfinished work from the 1850s that might be called the first Mormon drama). But a couple of years ago I discovered a reference to a 5-act play, “Celestial Marriage,” written by LDS Church member George A. Hicks. The play isn’t extant (as far as I can tell), but BYU has a flyer Hicks published to publicize the 1886 performance of the play in Clinton, Utah.

Yesterday’s discovery is new. And, since I haven’t really done much research on it, I don’t know much more than what I found, an 1897 Salt Lake Herald review talks about a play (no title given) that explores the life of Joseph Smith:

JOSEPH SMITH

A curious gathering which filled about one-half of the Lyceum auditorium came out to see what sort of a play the author had succeeded in making out of the life of Joseph Smith. Probably there was more surprise than anything else felt after it was all over, for despite the great length of piece, its decided preachiness and some ludicrous mishaps, one in the first representation and the smallness of the stage, there was still a great deal in the play to commend and to entitle it to a respectful hearing. It is written entirely from the Mormon standpoint and Joseph Smith, who is on the stage almost constantly, is little short of deified, while all who oppose him are made vipers and fiends of a description that caused the shudders to run down the auditors backs.

The play is nothing but a series of the dramatic episodes of the Mormon prophet’s career; the prologue shows his visit from the angel Moroni; the next act shows him in the hands of a mob which starts to tar and feather him, heavens lightning interposes and baffles them; the next shows him as a general, and in an act too long, the actor delivers almost verbatim the celebrated speech Joseph Smith rendered just before his assassination; the last act shows the death of the two brothers and the wounding of John Taylor.

The play is set in heroic, almost grandiloquent cast, and the actors rendered it in a style tragic to a degree. Many of the sentiments, and much of language, was undeniably striking, and the actors were all above the average seen in cheap houses. Mr Hosmer, the leading man, and the others had a prodigious role, which he knew none too well. If he would rant less he would be more effective. Miss Ross, who played Emma, was acceptable, and Charles Edier, cast for both Joseph Smith, sr., and Mehains, the apostate, was vigorous The actors who essayed the roles of Hyrum Smith, Willard Richards, the angel, John Taylor and James Arlington Bennett, were equal to their surroundings.

The crowing of the cock in one of the solemnest moments of the piece turns it into the ludicrous, and it should be dispensed with, while other music than “The Wedding March” should be selected for the thrilling episodes. “Nearer My God to Thee” can also be improved upon for an incidental selection, and the gentlemen of the mob who their necks should fall away from the curtain line when prostrated by lightning. We shall not be surprised if the play attracts a great deal of curious attention before the week is out.

[Reprinted from the Salt Lake Herald, Tuesday, July 20, 1897, pg 8]

A few comments:

• The Salt Lake Herald, as I understand it, was generally pro-Mormon at this point in time. However, the author sounds like he perhaps isn’t Mormon himself.
• The last sentence hints that perhaps this play ran for just 1 week — a very short time.
• I don’t know who “Mehains, the apostate” is. As far as I know there wasn’t any apostate by that name in Mormon history. It could be that the image of the article I got this from isn’t clear enough to give the correct name, or it could be that this character was a composite of the apostates Joseph Smith faced in his life.
• James Arlington Bennett is perhaps not known among many Mormons today. He was a resident of Brooklyn, New York who corresponded with Joseph Smith and apparently joined the Church at some point. He was Joseph Smith’s first choice as a running mate in his 1844 Presidential bid, and was a reporter for the New York Sun (the first scandal sheet in the U.S.) who came to Nauvoo after Smith’s death. He returned to Brooklyn and died there in 1863. I was looking for information about Bennett when I chanced across this review.

I think it would be interesting to find these missing plays. But, if nothing else, it helps disabuse the assumption that Mormon Drama took more than 50 years to get started when Salt Lake City was a beacon for the theater in the second half of the 19th century.

Obtaining theatre spaces to perform on, creating posters and ads, looking into liability insurance, organizing the on the ground producers in Utah, obtaining rights to scripts, looking for affordable ad space, sending personal (and probably annoying) fund raising letters to close friends and family, soliciting directors and designers and cast members, trying to sell videos to gain more capital, working the Facebook groups, attaching links… and that’s just on my end. I have producers, directors, playwrights, videographers, web designers and others who have been clocking in a lot of hours to get this group on its feet.Why do I do this?

The timing is pretty awful. I’m going to grad school  this Fall at Arizona State University. I live in Arizona while the shows I’ll be producing are in Utah.  I have a 9 month year old daughter, a 5 year old son with sensory processing disorder who’s starting kindergarten, and a very patient, supportive wife whose patience and support are being taxed, I’m sure. Why do I do this?

Farewell to Eden Trailer on You Tube

Why do I do this? Because it has been my dream to open a religiously and morally focused theatre company since early high school. Because, to paraphrase Eric Samuelsen, every Mormon Shakespeare needs a Mormon Globe. Because I love it. And because I believe not only is it what I want to do, but what I’m supposed to do. Because, if we do it right, I believe with all my heart it can be successful.  And  because we’ve had some wonderful doors opening for us lately which have seemed more than a little providential.

I was looking for some theatre spaces for us to perform in. Our former space which we rented from Provo Theatre Company, which is beautiful but small and limited, is currently up for sale and rental fees were becoming a hardship. So the writing on the wall seemed to indicate that it was time for Zion Theatre Company to find a new home. I approached the Castle Outdoor Theatre in Provo, and if I can find liability insurance, we’ve got a great deal with them for our early Fall shows. But that only filled a temporary need, as we needed somewhere where can perform year round.

Contemplating the issues and obstacles I was facing, I wrote a post over at the Association for Mormon Letters blog. It caught the eye of one Jeffrey Driggs who mentioned in the comments that the the Off Broadway Theatre, which he works for, may possibly be interested in allowing us to use their space when it wasn’t being used with their own season. One thing led to another, I met with some of their lovely management, and voila! If we perform well with our first play with OBT  in November, The Hobbit, then we have a new home for our 2012 season!

But then there is that pesky issue of funding. We already have a lot of the costumes, etc. we need for some of our early shows, but then there is liability insurance we have to come up with for the Castle Theatre, and every show has its costs, especially if we want them to be high quality shows. So, to start out with, we had to come up with a way to raise more funds. I thought about doing a Kickstarter fundraiser, which I still may consider later, but I really wanted to try something that could provide some sort of product to the person giving. Adam Figuiera had made some high quality recordings of my previous ZTC shows (as well as one from Alex Barlow for Fading Flower, which was actually produced by New Play Project, not ZTC), so I zeroed back on the idea of really pushing these DVDs/Blu-rays again. I hope that works, because our videographers really have done some excellent work with them and I want them to find a wide audience anyway.

So I’m going through all of this until my eyes are sore from looking at a computer screen, my fingers are tired from typing, and I’ve racked up a lot more minutes than usual on my cell phone. Why do I do this?

Because it gives me peace. For so long I told myself I needed to build towards my theatre company. I needed to focus on an individual show, or establish a reputation as a writer, or work with another theatrical group. But around the time I got accepted to my MFA program, I started to feel that all of that kind of thinking was in the past. The time for building was now, despite the inconvenience, despite the extra hours, despite the expert juggling. It was a deep, abiding impression that is fueling me even at this moment. This was going to happen, I had to know that. The gears were in place, and now it was time to work, work, work so that when I come back to Utah with my graduate degree in hand, I will come back to an already living, breathing thing.

To me, Zion Theatre Company is more than just a place to perform my plays. It’s definitely not just some vanity project. And I’m certainly not in it for the money, for if that had been in the case I would have gone for a much fatter cow than the arts (especially in this economy!). For me it’s bound up in my covenants, my way to consecrate to God what is inside of me and what I can do with my talents, and help others to do the same. I didn’t choose the name “Zion” idly, for I believe that the theatre has a special power to bring people together and cause a kind of sacred communion.

Brigham Young once said if he were placed on a cannibal island and given the charge of civilizing its inhabitants, the first thing he would construct would be a theater. I understand what he meant by that. For so long there have been those who have harnessed that inherent theatrical power for base or superficial purposes. I want to go back to the element of theatre that was used by the Greeks, that caused them to perform plays for their religious festivals, and integrate it into their worship. I want to go back to the instinct of Joseph Smith to use it as the primary instructional tool in temple worship. I want to go that part of our soul that recognizes that there is something sacred in enacting a story, even a fictional one, but one with deep truths embedded in that fiction.

We’ve all been given the charge to civilize the world and to help lead it to something Celestial, Some One Celestial. My contribution to that effort will be a Theater.

Last August I wrote a little about this drama renaissance and what we have lost since then—most importantly, the culture and infrastructure that supported the production of so much theater. Where once wards and branches throughout the Church mounted theatrical productions annually, now less than a dozen Mormon-themed productions are mounted each year, and those productions are usually in Utah. Where once a book of plays suitable for production by local congregations was published each year, now we are lucky if more than one play is published (last year is an exception). Where for many years a significant portion of Mormons might have seen a Mormon play in a given year, today we are lucky if members of the Church can even name a Mormon play (except for, perhaps, Saturday’s Warrior), let alone actually see a production.

This decline is certainly remarkable, especially given the attention paid to Mormons in dramatic works in recent decades. Instead of our own works, we are the subject (or target, if you prefer) of dramatic works at the highest level of the theater world.

While the reasons for this decline are perhaps complex, rooted in both societal changes in the U.S. and changes in focus from Church leadership, I’m not willing to say that drama shouldn’t and will not have a significant role in the future. Instead, I wonder what can or should happen to give theater a greater role in LDS culture, even if it never reaches the kingly role it once held.

Looking at the current status of Mormon theater, many of the structural elements needed are already there. We still have Mormon plays being written by a corpus of playwrights. In fact, the current crop is, I believe, as good as or perhaps better than Mormon theater ever had.

With the increase in the size of the Church, the educating capacity of BYU and other Church schools, and the rise of the current wave of LDS films, it seems likely that the corpus of actors and directors is also very strong, although mostly oriented towards non-LDS works and production.

Venues are a little bit trickier to assess. While we have many times the LDS chapels with stages that we had when MIAs were mounting productions, without Church support they may not be very useful—you can’t charge admission to a production in an LDS meetinghouse, which forces productions to seek donations to cover expenses if they wish to perform there. On the other hand, there are likely many, many more venues than there were in Mormon theater’s heyday, and a significant portion of these venues can be rented in order to mount a production—making the funds required an investment instead of a donation. The bottom line is that finding a venue is more difficult than it once was, but far from impossible.

It seems to me the larger hurdles, especially those that weren’t there before, involve more organization and financing than physical and human resources. Unlike during the MIA period, would-be directors and producers aren’t as likely to know what Mormon plays are available or how to obtain rights to those plays. Nor do they have any easy way of finding local Mormon actors, if they believe Mormon actors are necessary for a production. Financing the play can also be problematic, since there isn’t any easy way of identifying and contacting the obvious source of financing—wealthy local LDS Church members. And, should they overcome these hurdles, they likely face the most difficult hurdle of all: how to let the natural audience for Mormon theatre, LDS Church members, know about their production and encourage them to come see it.

Can these hurdles be overcome? Yes. It happens all the time with both LDS and non-LDS theatre. Producers and directors find actors and mount productions on shoestring budgets at times, and many times somehow find an audience. But there are also things that could be done to help, given the hurdles mentioned. A directory of Mormon plays, including descriptions, resources required and how to obtain rights would be nice. Perhaps a directory of LDS actors interested in local Mormon productions would help. And, in my experience, there are often well-connected local Church members who know sources of financing, and how to promote to other Church members.

Unfortunately, these hurdles seem overwhelming, and the solutions to them are not necessarily obvious. So I wonder if some kind of Mormon dramatic organization might be able to help—a group that could support efforts to produce local Mormon drama, providing local producers with information about how to find Mormon drama, locate suitable actors and venues, get financing and promote local productions to a Mormon audience, at least passing on what information is known and help that is available. Do you think that would work?

Perhaps this is just my vague daydream about what might be done. At a minimum, I hope that it defines the hurdles ahead of Mormon drama, and encourages someone to see if they might mount a production in their area. At least couldn’t cities with significant LDS populations and strong theatre industries—such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington D.C., New York and London—find enough talent and resources to put together productions or even set up acting companies? As I look around at the producing and acting capabilities that I see among LDS Church members here in New York, I have to think that it is possible.

Recently I’ve come across news reports about a number of films and plays about Mormonism, a couple of which seem unlikely to catch the attention of even the few of us who notice these things. By the size of the audience that will see them, and the location where they were produced and shown, I suspect that they could also be lost, if they don’t catch the attention of archivists and specialists. I hope that by listing them here, their existence won’t be forgotten. Better still, perhaps some archivist will track them down before all copies are inadvertently destroyed.

Unlike books and music, drama and film are somewhat ephemeral. They can exist in just a few copies—those needed to produce the play once or display the film at an experimental or art-house theater or enter the film in a film festival. Even today, some playwrights and directors resist publishing their work in book form or on DVD or the Internet believing, justifiably, that such a move would ruin the opportunity to get distribution to multiple theaters or production at a national venue. If they don’t reach that level, and are never published for whatever reason, then the play or the film is very vulnerable to being lost. It then only takes the destruction of the handful of copies that exist for the work to disappear forever.

It is true that today’s technologies make this less likely. The number of venues has expanded, increasing the number of films that succeed (although competition for this success may even be more intense than it used to be). It is also much easier to make multiple copies and distribute them. But with the confusion in these new methods of distribution, how will archives find and obtain copies for preservation if the plays are not published or the film isn’t distributed on DVD?

If a Mormon-themed play is produced at the University of Alberta, will a copy of the play find its way into that University’s library? If it does, will it be accessible to students of Mormon Studies? Will BYU get a copy?

Or what if a Portuguese-language documentary about LDS missionaries is shown in Lisbon and in local film festivals in Portugal, but never makes it to DVD. How will academics who study Mormons in film know about it?

It seems to me that plays and films can still be lost. So let me mention the news items I’ve seen.

I should also note that I don’t know anything more about these works than what is in the news reports. I haven’t seen them and, in some cases, I don’t even know if they are anti-mormon or not. Any further information would be much appreciated.

• Santos dos Últimos Dias, dir. by Leonor Noivo. Documentary, Portugal 2009. 45 min. IndieLisboa 2009 Film Festival. Terratreme. A documentary about LDS missionaries. (3:14 trailer)
• The Sugar Bean Sisters by Nathan Sanders. Premeired Off-Broadway, WPA Theater, 1995. 75 productions to date. Author website. Most recent production in Long Beach, California, reviewed here. This “Southern Gothic comedy” follows the Nettles sisters attempt to escape spinsterhood and their home in a Florida swamp near Disney World. One of the sisters is evidently Mormon, and they get a visit from her bishop during the play.
• Shaded Light: The History of Joseph Smith Jr. by Brendan Thompson. New Works Festival, University of Alberta, Timms Centre, 2011. Mentioned in article about the festival in the St. Albert Gazette. The information about the play suggests that the author is not Mormon.
• Tabloid, dir. by Errol Morris. Documentary, 2010. 87 min. SXSW Film Festival 2011. Sarasota Film Festival, 2011. Sundance Film Festival, 2011. Reportedly submitted for Cannes. The film looks at the case of former Miss Wyoming Joyce McKinney, who followed her former fiancée when he left for England on an LDS mission, kidnapped him and raped him. See here, and here.

I must admit, that given the publicity at Sundance, many will know about the last film, Tabloid. But in case you didn’t…

Every month I also plan on setting little spotlights on little news items and tidbits about Mormon Drama along with the monthly Scripting Mormon Drama spot. So here goes our first crop of notables for the month of January:

- The Book of Mormon Musical… by the creators of South Park!

Some of us who have had the misfortune of seeing one of Trey Parker’s and Matt Stone’s strangely malicious AND strangely affectionate lampoons about Latter-day Saint religion, history, and culture on their  irreverent and crude show South Park . At least the tongue in cheek South Park segment about the people in hell being told, “The correct answer was… the Mormons,” has some healthy appreciation among Mormons and is often quoted with nervous laughter. There is also a relatively positive spin on Mormon family life and FHE in one episode, but their distorted and erroneous version of Mormon history shows Martin Harris as a duped idiot, with Lucy Harris being the smart one (of course neglecting to mention that Martin Harris and the three witnesses report to seeing the plates and an angel) and showing Joseph Smith as a charlatan offends Mormon sensibilities, making us all seem as much of stupid dupes  as their version of Martin Harris. And don’t get me started on their “Super Friends” spoof of creating a super hero team out of major religious figures, including Joseph Smith, Jesus, and Mohammed (at least we’re not the only ones in their cross hairs).  Parker and Stone were also the creators of the purportedly filthy film  Orgasmo, about an LDS missionary who becomes a porn star to pay for his mission (uh… what?!). So for some of us, the news about Parker and Stone making a Broadway musical about Mormons came with a certain amount of dread and morbid curiosity.

I’ve had my high school students authoritatively quote these twisted, offensive segments to me as if they were true, penetrating exposes on Mormonism,  so I’m a little afraid of where these two creators’ morbid fascination with our religion is going to take them this time and how it will again capitalize on us for a few cheap laughs and some dirty jabs. Of course, they’ll do it while stating it with enough of a smile and sense of pretended understanding that will illicit comments like this from Vogue Magazine:

“It is, hands down, the filthiest, most offensive, and—surprise—sweetest thing you’ll see on Broadway this year, and quite possibly the funniest musical ever.”

Here’s a couple of news items about the upcoming show (which begins Feb. 24th), including a filmed interview with Trey and Parker with the New York Post:

http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/popwrap/from_south_park_to_broadway_okelmt8N33qQOG1MvR15QK

http://www.playbill.com/playblog/2011/01/the-book-of-mormon-promo-video/

The premise of the musical:  two Mormon missionaries serving in Africa, seems benign enough until it’s revealed that one of them is a closet homosexual (of course pairing Mormons with this divisive issue hasn’t been done before! Here we go again…) and until you realize that nothing by these two satirists is ever benign.

New Play Project’s Two Upcoming Plays: He and She Fighting, A Love Story and WWJD

On a happier note, New Play Project continues its commitment to producing new Mormon Drama, with upcoming plays by Eric Samuelsen and Anna Christina Kohler Lewis.

He and She Fighting: A Love Story, written by Eric Samuelsen and directed by Davey Morrison, is first up to bat, being presented at the Provo Theater (105 East, 100 North, Provo, UT) from February 10-February 21 at 7:30 pm. A segment of this play (”The Exact Total Opposite”) was included in NPP’s recent anthology: Out of the Mount: 19 From New Play Project. The blurb advertising the event bills the play as, “Boy meets girl. Boy dates girl. Boy argues endlessly with girl. A painfully funny (and sometimes just painful) look at one couple’s relationship as chronicled by the times they hate each other most, playwright Eric Samuelsen’s new full-length comedy is the perfect way to celebrate Valentine’s Day OR Singles Awareness Day. Either way, you won’t want to miss it.”

Soon after that (the first two weeks of April),  Anna Christina Kohler Lewis’s WWJD will be performed by NPP, again at the Provo Theatre. I just finished reading the posted script this morning and, after some initial trepidition about the premise (a skateboarding Jesus visits and subtly helps a bunch of college room mates, while remaining involved in their day to day activities, including washing dishes, miniature golfing, dancing at a bar, among other atypical things for the Son of God to do). After the initial shock from the audacity of the script, I found myself warmed by Lewis’s down to earth Jesus (you know, the one who dined with sinners and consistently pushed against people’s preconceived notions). In her approach Lewis’s play is much more akin  to It’s a Wonderful Life than The Last Temptation of Christ.  If people can get past the initial prejudice against its anachronistic, populist Jesus, then I think people could be quite spiritually moved by this play (with the possibility of lots of nervous laughter, as it’s quite funny, too).  It will have to overcome several hurdles, though. The first, and probably most major, obstacle being getting enough people in Utah Valley who are comfortable with the premise enough to  want to buy tickets. However, although the premise seems brazen and possibly blasphemous, once you get to the end of the play, you discover quite the opposite. It’s practically old fashioned and, strangely, that fact plays as one of the script’s greatest strengths.

Not living in Utah anymore has its advantages and its drawbacks… for me one of the things I REALLY miss is the Utah Theatre scene. Seeing original Mormon plays from New Play Project, or the the really interesting theatrical projects that happening these days at UVU and BYU, or seeing familiar names on the program at the myriad of quality plays performed in both Salt Lake and Utah County… it’s something I really miss. Fortunately, I keep my ear close to the ground (and glued to the events posted on Facebook and the Utah Theatre Bloggers Association website) to keep updated on what’s happening with Mormon Drama in the good ol’ State of Deseret. For, with all its quirks and foibles, Utah is still the center of the Mormon Arts, although it would be great to see a truly global Mormonism represented through Mormon Drama and other Mormon Arts (and for proof of such progress, one only has to look at the relatively recent international issue of Mormon Artist ). But, as it is, those of us out of the hive miss on some great artistic projects about our faith.

Fortunately, I have been asked by certain omnipotent powers that be here at AMV (okay, Jonathan Langford) to stay even more in touch with this side of my natural interests and start a monthly column about Mormon Drama. I will not always be the column’s writer, as I will often ask other guest Mormon dramatists and thespians to take over for a month and give us their two cents on the State of Mormon Drama. But I hope to consistently oversee the spot, to keep it running smoothly so that it can give some consistent information about my most beloved branch of the Mormon Arts. As far as I’m aware, others at AMV will be running similar columns about their own individual disciplines. In working with own angle on Mormon Drama, I’ll focus on several approaches:

- Mormon Drama’s Past: From Brigham Young starring in Pizarro, to the Salt Lake Theatre, to Orestes Utah Bean’s Corianton, to the flowering of Mormon Drama from BYU playwrights like Thomas Rogers and Robert Elliott,  to the hey day of the Mormon Musical in the 1970s and 1980s, to the more modern representations (and misrepresentations) of Mormonism on the national stage, there’s a lot that’s happened in Mormon Drama’s history which is interesting, dynamic and ripe for writing about. I’ll write reviews and analysis of past dramatic writing, discuss important historical points where Mormon Drama flowered or withered, and in general celebrate, criticize, and analyze our dramatic past.

- Mormon Drama’s Present: What’s happening NOW? In the Jell-O Belt, in New York, in the outreaches of Africa or Samoa, where are the modern Mormon plays and how are they being received?

- Mormon Drama’s Future: James Arrington has called Theatre “the fabulous invalid.” Theatre survived (sometimes by the skin of its teeth) the onslaught of alternative art and media, whether it was film, VHS, DVD, video games, or the internet. Will it continue to limp along in its current state of performances of intimacy and immediacy, or will it have to change dramatically to survive the ongoing media revolution in the world? And how will the Church’s ever changing image, ever present history, and ever pervasive culture effect the growth of a home grown Mormon Drama, and how we are represented in the Drama of those who don’t understand us?

-Mormon Drama’s Personalities: Who have been the movers and shakers of Mormon Drama in its past and present? Who are the up and comers? How will the power of the individual interact, effect, and be effected by the larger Mormon culture?

- Why Mormon Drama?: Why do we do this at all? Why not integrate our talents with a wider, more universal subject matter? What is there about the medium and the religion where there should be any interaction at all? What are our philosophical and spiritual underpinnings that keep many chugging away at what many see as an odd marriage in the first place? Why place Mormon characters and subject matters on the stage?

So, for those lovers and followers of Mormon Drama (”we few, we happy few, we band of brothers…”), hold onto your hats, for it’s going to be a fun ride!

The Christ story, however, is not the only “true myth.” I’ve seen Campbell’s pattern not only pop up in religious narratives such as the life of Christ and Buddha and Muhammad (some whose historicity is obviously debated depending on your religious views), but also in the lives of more established historical figures… try applying Campbell’s pattern to Joan of Arc for example, and other epic figures like Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, Jr. You’ll find some striking consistency. One of the most perfect examples I’ve found, however, is the life of Joseph Smith. His life plays out like an epic myth, the kind of stuff which would be seem obviously constructed after the fact, if we hadn’t so many historical proofs to back up the basic outline of the story. Now, obviously, events like the First Vision are up for debate, if you’re not an orthodox Mormon, but other events like Liberty Jail (which I’ll figure conveniently in Campbell’s “Belly of the Whale” stage) are without question historical facts in the American religious narrative. So I find it interesting that this pattern can crop up is non-structured scenarios in history, which attests to the universality of the Hero’s Journey model and how it is not only a convenient way to plot a story, but also an immortal way to show the truth of how spirituality plays out.

Which brings us not only to the life of Joseph Smith, but the pattern he layed out about man’s existence, what Mormons like to call the Plan of Salvation. In the rest of my essay, I’ll go through Campbell’s Hero’s Journey pattern and apply it first to Joseph Smith’s life and by then I think you’ll also see how the pattern applies to the Plan of Salvation and our individual journeys through mortality:

JOSEPH SMITH AND THE HERO’S JOURNEY

THE CALL TO ADVENTURE: In Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, the Hero is always first called to leave his past life of obscurity and day to day existence and chart into a world of wonder and danger, where the Hero is to obtain some great boon or accomplish some great goal, which generally will be to the benefit of his fellow man.

Joseph’s early life is a perfect fit to this sort of beginning. Joseph Smith, the young farm hand whose strong body is hired out for his labor, but has very little room for upward mobility in his life. From all outlooks, his best hope is to become a farmer like his father, if he can escape the crushing dillemmas and ill twists of fate that kept his parents from escaping the constant threat of crushing poverty. Like Luke Skywalker in the beginning of Star Wars, King Arthur as a lanky squire, or an obscure carpenter’s son from Galilee, Joseph Smith at first glance would be an unlikely figure to make any sort of impact on the world around him.

Yet despite these unlikely beginnings Joseph Smith, like the most interesting of Heroes, has a complex and introspective inner world, and when we really launch into his narrative, we find him as a young 14 year old pondering the contradictions of the religious drama playing out around him. Church contending against Church, pastor against priest, all vying for the attention of parishioners, all claiming the truth to get more sheep in their fold. Who of all these Churches were right, asked the young Joseph.

Joseph finds guidance in the Bible’s book of James, which tells the young man to ask of God. In a grove of trees he prays, and is first attacked by an unseen, sinister force, but is delivered by a peaceful, light filled vision. The light is so bright that he thinks that the leaves are going to catch fire. In this light, he sees two figures, God the Father who then introduces Joseph to his Beloved Son, Jesus the Christ. And Joseph’s first call is delivered: he is to join none of the Churches. The call has not yet necessarily been defined in its particulars yet. There is yet no mention of the Book of Mormon, priesthoods, Joseph’s role as a prophet, or establishing Zion. Yet Joseph has been made separate, set apart from the world’s apostate religions, who draw near to him with their lips, but are very far from him in their hearts. He is to prepare himself for something else, a new journey.

REFUSAL OF THE CALL: In the Hero’s Journey, the hero initially shows some reluctance about his new role or mission. Like Muhammad questioning the validity of the angel coming to him, or Bilbo Baggins thinking a mission about thieving, gold, and dragons strays too far from his comfort zone of the Shire, the Hero shows some reticence to pry himself from the world he has known. Joseph Smith goes through a similar period after the First Vision, where he falls back into a circle of rough, boisterous friends, and is more concerned about the small doings of this laughing pack, than the more universal vision he has been given. Having been persecuted and separated from the religious herd, he is accepted by familiarity of undiscerning, non-judging friends, who may have been the force to lure him into treasure digging. Joseph is becoming aware of supernatural, prophetic gifts through the use of seer stones, which he uses in the search of treasure with his father and the local crowd. But this was not his mission, and in his heart Joseph knew it. A life of unsastisfied greed, alcohol, indolence, and irreverent laughter being his only relief from the otherwise strenuous day to day work he was engaged in, it was all a far cry from what he had been set apart for. He was straying, and if he lost sight of his quest, he may be swallowed up by this comfortable, unstrenuous, familiar world forever.

SUPERNATURAL AID: Once the hero finally commits to the quest, Campbell tells us that a magical or supernatural guide appears to assist them in their quest, often giving the Hero magical objects or talismans to assist them.

Again, this comes straight in line with Joseph Smith’s narrative. Joseph becoming painfully aware of his failings and sins in falling in with this wrong crowd and their less than pure treasure seeking. He prays and seeks a divine manifestation, as he had received before, to know of his standing before God. To his astonishment, the Angel Moroni appears in his bed room, giving him instructions to prepare him to receive and translate the Book of Mormon. Much like Merlin, Gandalf, or Obi Wan Kenobi, Moroni acts as Joseph’s guide and teacher, tutoring him and preparing him for the next several years before he receives the sacred talismans to add to his seer stones: the gold plates of the Book of Mormon, the Urrim and Thummim, Laban’s sword, etc. These are to be his Excalibur, the gifts bestowed by the elves upon the Fellowship of the Ring.Moroni would not be Joseph’s only supernatural aid to assist him in his quest. John the Baptist and then Peter, James and John the Beloved would arm him with powerful priesthoods. They are baptized and receive the Holy Ghost. Moses, Elijah, Elias, and Christ would give him the keys to usher in this new dispensation. Angels would continue to assist, even with difficult and trying principles, such as polygamy. Although God asks what may seem to be impossible tasks, yet he did not leave Joseph without aid.

Through these Supernatural Aids, Joseph’s mission also becomes more crystalized. His role as a prophet and a seer is defined, he is told about Zion and asked to try and establish it, he is instructed to carry out the Restored Gospel, and to baptize and confirm the Holy Ghost upon the nations. Through the priesthood, he is asked to begin the sealing of the human family, to begin the work that will eventually bind us all together. Joseph’s mission is a boon for all mankind, an eternal work with everlasting consequences.

THE CROSSING OF THE FIRST THRESHOLD: There is a point in a Hero’s Quest where they must move past all they have previously known and venture past the limits of their secure world into this larger, more dangerous world. Like Frodo and Sam moving past the limits of the Shire for the first time in their life, they finally let go of those last trappings of security and move into a wider world.

For Joseph Smith, this is when Joseph Smith and his followers are driven out of Palmyra and Colesville, New York, and move to Kirtland, Ohio. Here they start fully engaging in the quest they are asked to fulfill. They build a temple to God and bestow its initial ordinances, start gathering the Saints through missionary work, begin spreading the Book of Mormon and the Restored Gospel, and identify Zion in Missouri.

BELLY OF THE WHALE: Continuing on with Campbell’s monomyth, there is a point in our hero’s quest where he is completely enveloped by this strange, new world, often literally swallowed by it. In some stories like the Biblical Jonah, Pinnochio, or Finding Nemo, the protagonist is literally swallowed by a whale. In other cases, it is more figurative, as in Lord of the Rings when they travel through Mount Moria. This is a point of no return, and often is a dark point for the hero where they have to become introspective about what brought them to this point and how they are going to survive from here on out. In a sense, it is here that the hero figuratively or literally dies, only to re-born.

In Missouri we have find Joseph at such a point, where the Saints are driven from Jackson County, then end up in Far West are once again sieged upon. Many of the Saints are pillaged, raped, and murdered (Haun’s Mill being an extreme example of these persecutions). An extermination order is given against the Mormon religion by Governor Boggs and eventually Joseph Smith and some of his closest associates are arrested by the Missouri Militia in an act of betrayal by one of their own and duplicitous acts by their enemies. Joseph Smith and his associates are then carted off to the dank, cold, and cramped quarters of Liberty Jail.

Liberty Jail has become an iconic location for Mormons, acting as Joseph Smith’s closest proximity to Gethsemene. It is Joseph’s whale, a prison being an ironically fitting place for a hero to end up. Christ, Martin Luther King, Jr., Joan of Arc, Joseph of Egypt, among many other larger than life figures have a strikingly similar moment of unjust imprisonment by this threatening world, and it has a strikingly similar effect on all of them. A time of soul searching, introspection, hardship, revelation, and most importantly… transformation.

It is here that Joseph Smith receives the maginificent Doctrine and Covenants 121 through 123, and it is here that Joseph Smith makes a major shift in his life. Having survived a hellish ordeal where many expected him to be executed, he emerges more confident, less reliant on associates such as Oliver Cowdery or Sidney Rigdon who he has discovered, despite their gifts, were much less reliable than the inner vision which God placed within him. Less reliant on men, more reliant on God, Joseph Smith (much like Gandalf after Moria, or Jonah after the whale) was a new man.

THE ROAD OF TRIALS: Throughout many points of the Hero’s story, there will be trials which they have to overcome to achieve their goal or destination. A steadily increasing series of problems and adversaries crop up before any final confrontation or conclusion can be faced. In Joseph Smith’s life the examples are too numerous to list completely (the man knew something about opposition) but a short list of these trials include the attempts to steal the gold plates from Joseph; the loss of the 116 manuscript pages of the Book of Mormon; Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon being tarred, feathered and beaten (an indirect consequence which was the death of one of his adopted twin children); constant legal harassement and persecution; the Financial Crisis with the Kirtland Bank; the Kirtland Apostasies and their attempted coup of the Church; the falling away of the three witnesses; Zion’s Camp; the betrayals of Orson Hyde, Thomas Marsh, and W.W. Phelps; the expulsion of the Saints from Jackson County; the deaths of so many of his children and other family members, such as his brothers Alvin and Don Carlos, and his father; his family’s and his people’s often crushing poverty; the Fall of Far West; the widespread Malaria in Nauvoo’s beginnings; the Warsaw Signal; the storm surrounding polygamy, including William Law and the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor; the vacillating loyalty of Sidney Rigdon; and of course the long road leading to his martyrdom in the Carthage Jail.

Every step of the way, Joseph Smith was opposed, the hounds of hell pursuing him. Yet he braved onward despite great personal loss. When one chronicles the long list of suffering in his life in consequence of his commitment to his quest, one does not see the acts of a two faced charlatan, but rather the determination of the epic hero.

THE MEETING WITH THE GODDESS: In a great many stories, there is the goddess figure,whether a literal goddess (often a maternal or mother goddess) or a romantic other, that the hero receives a boon of love from, whether romantic, maternal, or otherwise. Lord of the Rings actually has both, with Frodo’s meeting with Galadriel fulfilling this requirement, while Aragorn’s nearly mystical relationship with and eventual marriage to Arwen also constitutes this aspect of the myth.

This aspect of the narrative has all sort of interesting corrolaries with Joseph Smith’s story. His wife Emma is an obvious example one can cite. Despite the strain that their relationship suffered due to the epic difficulties attached to the revelation on polygamy, Joseph and Emma shared an intense and legendary love. The Prophet and the Elect Lady’s relationship survived a host of strains that would have completely obliterated most human relationships. It is even more interesting when one reads some accounts where the claim is made that Moroni is reportedly to have been the one to lead Joseph Smith to Emma Smith, after his brother’s Alvin’s death required him to find a new helper with the Book of Mormon (if I remember correctly, my source for that tidbit was in D. Michael Quinn’s Joseph Smith and the Magic World View).

This concept is doubly re-enforced when one considers the Mormon doctrine of Eternal Marriage and Temple sealing and the repercussions that creates with this stage of the pattern. And if one is bold and comfortable with 19th century polygamy, one can even include Joseph Smith’s polygamous wives in this step. Joseph’s own mother Lucy Mack Smith could also easily fulfill the maternal aspect of this role, as she was always a supportive and prominent figure of love in Joseph’s life.

Yet the connection does not end there. Joseph Smith revitalized the concept of a Heavenly Mother, which was very foreign to Western, 19th century Christianity. A female wife or partner to the male Yahweh and/or Elohim has deep roots in Judeo-Christian thought, especially with the Hebrew goddess Ashera, consort of Yahweh. After King Josiah’s purge of the recognition of Ashera in Hebrew religion and the Jews’ ever increasing monotheism, recognition of a Heavenly Mother was all but obliterated in Judeo-Christian religion (for a really detailed hypothesis of this process, look up some of Margaret Barker’s amazing work on the Old Testament, including this essay. Barker’s not a Mormon, but she sure sounds like it sometimes). Joseph Smith, however, recognizes a Heavenly Mother as part of the oneness of God. This puts a very literal stamp on this phase of the Hero’s Journey, as Joseph Smith brings the male and female into greater unity in Mormon theology. In this way, Joseph Smith certainly experienced the love of his Heavenly Mother.

WOMAN AS TEMPTRESS: In the Hero’s Journey, there is a force or a figure that tries to lure away our hero from his goal with various temptations. This figure is often personified in a woman (Homer’s The Odyssey famously has the sirens and the nymph Calypso who fulfill this role), but does not necesarily have to take a female form. For example, the obvious source of malevolent temptation in the Lord of the Rings is the ring itself, in Star Wars Emperor Palpatine and the Dark Side of the Force fulfills this, and logically Satan plays this role when he tempts Christ.

If I weren’t a faithful Mormon (or at least had a more RLDS worldview), it would be easy to identify polygamy as Joseph Smith’s “Woman as Temptress,” but as I believe Joseph was not a fallen prophet in this (or any) instance, and that he was not misdirected with his and his contemporaries practice of polygamy during their commanded time, such a hypothesis doesn’t work for me. However, there are plenty of other occassions when Joseph Smith is tempted. Martin and Lucy Harris play this role with the lost 116 pages of the manuscript of the Book of Mormon , while the angel Moroni warned Joseph that he would tempted to use the gold plates as a means of getting rich (his early treasure seeking, and the Lord’s repudiation of it, could easily be applied here). Joseph Smith eventually overcame these tempatations, but they caused great havoc in his life and nearly jeopardized his quest. Fortunately, with the aid of Grace, he was able to fulfill his quest despite dark lures.

ATONEMENT WITH THE FATHER: Eventually our Hero in his Journey must confront a figure that holds great power over his life, and must either defeat it, be redeemed by it, or in some cases both. This is often a father figure, as we find in Darth Vader, but does not necessarily need to be. It could be a malevolent force, but more often it is a misunderstood positive force. Either way, our Hero must come to terms with it and emerge changed again because of facing it.

Again, as with Meeting with the Goddess, this has multiple levels of meaning in Joseph’s life. It can be taken literally with Joseph’s father Joseph, Sr., who Joseph in many ways redeems because of his revelatory solution to his father’s earlier religious difficulties of feeling desires to be connected to God, but having a natural dislike of and distance from organized religion. Joseph Sr. was also redeemed by his son, having his dignity was restored (after bouts with alcoholism, constant financial difficulty, and treasure seeking) by being baptized by his son and made the Church Patriarch (for a very interesting view on this process, see Richard Bushman’s Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling).

But that is the son redeeming the father, like Christ and Adam, Joseph of Egypt and his family, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. In a Mormon worldview, it is much more important for the son to be redeemed so that he come into the presence of the Father. In fact, this is the prevailing goal of all Mormons, reflected nowhere better than the divine drama acted out in LDS temples. Mormons are prepared to meet with the Father because of of the redemptive power of the Atonement (there’s that word again) of Jesus the Christ, the Anointed One, the Savior. And its that chasm that Joseph was trying to breach when calling upon God in the Sacred Grove before the First Vision, as he was trying to find that redemption again when he called upon God in his bedroom before he received the visitation of the angel Moroni. He was striving for redemption, for re-connection to his Spiritual Father Christ, and his Heavenly Parents, Elohim.

So the building of the temple in Kirtland and then Nauvoo is Joseph’s most prominent example of his Atonement with the Father. In that holy building, the human drama is acted out, the hero’s journey is experienced by every Latter-day Saint, and it always ends with being ushered back into the presence of the Father. And in Joseph’s life, this was all his prophetic mission was pointing to, not only receiving his own redemption from sin, but helping carve a path out for others’ to receive of that same atoning blood which would bring them back to their Heavenly Parents.

APOTHEOSIS: This is the death of the hero, often a literal one, but because of that death a great change happens to them, and as they died in the flesh, they now live in the spirit. Through this death, the Hero finds bliss, enlightenment, and love. This is Christ’s death and resurrection, Hindu and Buddhist Nirvana, this is Frodo sailing off on a ship with elves to a land of peace.

In the case of Joseph Smith this of course happens with Joseph Smith’s martyrdom at Carthage Jail. Having tried to escape it at first, heading to build the Saints up in the Rocky Mountains, Joseph Smith then willingly chooses death as a way to save his people from the mobs that are brewing. “I am going as a lamb to the slaughter, but I am as calm as a summer’s morning,” Joseph said, having achieved that peace about all of our inevitable mortality… and then our subsequent immortality. When the angry and fearful mob shot him in Carthage Jail, and he fell from that second story window, his ascencion and transformation was imminent.

ULTIMATE BOON and THE CROSSING OF THE RETURN THRESHOLD: In the Hero’s Journey, there is an ultimate prize or accomplishment, the reason for the quest. Once that is achieved, the Hero has received what they came for.

From a Christian viewpoint, that boon is salvation in Christ. Although Mormons also adhere to that prize, because of Joseph Smith we bring it one step further. When Christ said, “Ye are gods,” in the Gospel of John 10:34, Joseph Smith took him at his word and in the King Follett Discourse he expounds and tells the world that God is not content with making us servants, but rather co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17), as Paul tells us. And “when he shall appear, we shall be like him,” as John the Beloved said (1 John 3:2). So similarly Joseph Smith said at that funeral of King Follett:

The mind of man is as immortal as God himself. I know that my testimony is true; hence, when I talk to these mourners, what have they lost? Their friends and relatives are separated from their bodies for only a short season; their spirits existed coequal with God, and they now exist in a place where they converse together, the same as we do on the earth… I take my ring from my finger and liken it unto the mind of man, the immortal spirit, because it has no beginning. Suppose I cut it in two; as the Lord lives, because it has a beginning, it would have an end… if I am right, I might with boldness proclaim from the house tops that God never did have power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not create himself. Intelligence exists upon a self-existent principle; it is a spirit from age to age, and there is no creation about it. Moreover, all the spirits that God ever sent into the world are susceptible to enlargement.

And so this boon of Joseph Smith’s is, after all, truly an “ultimate” boon. It is godhood. But unlike Lucifier, the Son of the Morning who sought to overthrow God and take his place, Joseph Smith was not commanded to take a high place and make everyone else subservient, but rather Joseph Smith was commanded to deliver this revelation of communal exaltation to all mankind. It is not a prideful, selfish upward conquering that Christ taught us here. It is Elohim, the Hebrew word used in Genesis for plural gods, or a council of Gods. It is the City of Gods, a Society of Gods, a Universe of Gods, the ultimate fulfillment of Zion. All who desire to partake and sacrifice for each other are truly equal, not equal in poverty, but equal in glory. And in true Hero’s Journey fashion, this is the message that Joseph Smith was meant to return from his journey and deliver the ultimate boon to all mankind, like Bilbo desiring to share the gold rather than hoarding it like the dwarves. God wasn’t small and selfish who hoarded his knowledge and ability like some medieval dictator, or like the dragon Smaug. Rather God has many mansions, an infinite number if needed, to fill up with his children and to share his glory.

There is more to the Hero’s Journey which I also believe applies to Joseph Smith (especially the steps “Master of Two Worlds” and “Freedom to Live”) but I’ll stop there and instead simply ask you to reflect upon this Universal Story. In the words of Joseph Smith, I say “this is good doctrine. It tastes good. I can taste the principles of eternal life, and so can you.” There is a universal story echoing in all of us, a common unconsciousness, and if we hear it we become like the sheep who know their Savior’s voice.

I have been teaching about Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey” in my high school creative writing class and so it has set me back on this track of thinking which has been boring its way into my everyday unconscious for a long time now. For those unaware of what exactly “The Hero’s Journey” is, it chiefly comes from a book Joseph Campbell wrote called The Hero with a Thousand Faces . Written in 1949, it was a very important book that set forth the idea that there are patterns and archetypes found in all sorts of disparate mythology, fairy tales, religious narratives, and folk lore. That all these stories from unconnected and far flung cultures follow one basic story. It is also a trend that can be found in epic literature and film, which is uncannily and unconsciously present in everything from Homer’s The Odyssey to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. And many writers now purposely craft their tales to follow this pattern, George Lucas’s Star Wars being one of the most famous examples.

BYU Experimental Theatre Company's production of _Prometheus Unbound_

I also purposely followed this pattern with my play Prometheus Unbound several years ago (and have addressed it less directly in other plays such as Swallow the Sun and my new work Manifest), much because the idea has fascinated me ever since I was taught it in my high school sophmore honors English class. Ms. Drummond mentioned Carl Jung’s revolutionary studies in the early and mid 20th century about archetypes (a simpler overview here) and the collective unconscious. In my terms, archetypes are repeating patterns that happen in mythology and other stories, in psychology, in dreams, and even (at least from what I’ve been able to observe) in many points in recorded, literal history (try applying this pattern to Joan of Arc, for example).

Carl Jung

If  Freud is the psychologist for the atheist, Carl Jung is the psychologist for the spiritual believer. Jung puts a lot of faith in religious or spiritual experiences, which rather than making one disturbed psychologically (as many psychologists would be apt to attribute), rather he believed that they made one more psychologically healthy. “Here we must ask,” Jung wrote in The Undiscovered Self, “Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God , and hence that will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving into the crowd?” To Jung, religious experiences, perhaps even “supernatural” experiences, fulfilled an innate need in the human subconscious and communicated something very important about the nature of man. Campbell draws a lot from these Jungian ideas of archetypes and universal consciousness in his concept of a “Hero’s Journey.” There is something in the human psyche (interesting that “psyche” translates to “soul”) that creates these spiritual patterns in our stories.

C.S. LEWIS AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUSNESS

I dealt with many of these concepts in the play I wrote about C.S. Lewis’s conversion to Christianity, Swallow the Sun. C.S. Lewis struggled with these re-occurring patterns he saw in his passionate reading of early world mythologies that he loved in his early life. Lewis loved Norse mythology, Greek mythology, the old stories which caused this difficult to define “joy” to spring up in him. However, this same pattern in the “dying god” myths who would have a kind of glorious resurrection (such as the Greek Prometheus, the Egyptian Osiris, or the Norse Baldr), he also saw in the story of Christ. This led him to believe that Christianity was no different than these other myths… Christianity may have had many things going for it, but originality was not one of them.

New Play Project's 2008 production of _Swallow the Sun_

This was a major stumbling block for Lewis and one of the causes of his fall from his childhood faith and his subsequent period as an atheist. It would be many years and many spiritual guides before his road led him back to a faith in some sort of deity, but eventually when he conceded to some sort of God, it wasn’t necessarily a Christian one at first. Again, there was that pesky pattern. Why was Christianity so similar to other myths? Was it simply spiritual plagiarism?

Fortunately for all we lovers of C.S. Lewis’s Christian fiction and apologetics, two important friends were attached to Lewis’s life. J.R.R. Tolkien (the yet to be author of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit) and Hugo Dyson (a University professor and an expert on Shakespeare). These two men were major causes of Lewis’s conversion to Christianity when the three friends and future Inklings took a long walk one night and discussed these major issues that were bothering Lewis. Tolkien and Dyson addressed this similarity between these narratives not by talking around them or ignoring them, but plainly accepting them as part of the religion. Christianity was the “true myth” they said. Christianity was the truth that all the other myths were pointing to.

I don’t know whether these three men were familiar with Carl Jung (although it’s not a shot in the dark that they may have, since their later commentary and work indicates that they were familiar with Jung’s associate Freud), but the line of reasoning they took at that point in C.S. Lewis’s conversion to Christianity was very Jungian. Like Jung, their reasoning acknowledges that there is a kind of pre-existent memory, a “collected unconsciousness” that we all share in common. Whether it’s hard wired genetically, spiritually, or psychologically, the result is the same. Human beings inherently know the same story… when they create their stories, their myths, their movies, many of these components of that story tumble out unbidden, for it’s a natural impulse, it’s written on our bones, etched in our spirits, embedded in our psychology. And in this case, that story pointed to the reality of the Christ, the Savior Jesus. But it doesn’t stop there. It is also the story of Joseph Smith. And it doesn’t stop there either. It is the story of Buddha, and Jean d’Arc, and Abraham Lincoln. It is the story of so many people and so many places, so universal in its application that it can be called the Human Story.

In the next part of this essay, it is this story that I aim to tell. Or Re-Tell, for it’s been told many times in many places by many people, connected by nothing but a common humanity and a spiritual spark.

Kathryn Little and Amos Omer in New Play Project's Production of _The Fading Flower_. Photo by Naoma Wilkinson.

I have written two LDS History plays, one called Friends of God (about the events leading up to Joseph Smith’s martyrdom) the other called The Fading Flower (about the conflict surrounding the LDS/ RLDS schism about polygamy, especially as it related to Joseph and Emma Smith’s family). I was criticized by some people for writing the plays (one family member even told me after seeing the play, that he thought I was going to go apostate). Some people thought that the plays brought up too many uncomfortable facts in Church history. They thought that presenting a less than ideal image of Church figures would be damaging to people’s faith. And, truth told, there are some people I know who struggled with both plays.
The irony, of course, is that I wrote the plays to build up faith rather than tear it down… I consider the plays to tell the faith of people who struggled, but were ultimately redeemed by those struggles, either in this life or the next. The plays clearly state God’s reality and love and show the Church’s leaders as inspired, although not perfect. I addressed hard questions, but I also believe I presented answers to those questions, if people were willing to put aside their prejudices and preconceptions. And that, more often than not, proved to be the case.

I had one actor who had gone inactive until he was in Friends of God and then decided to go on a full time mission as a result of being in the play and the Spirit he felt in being part of it. The plays opened up conversations with less active, former member, and non-member friends. I had numerous people come up to me (sometimes in tears) telling me how the play addressed issues they had been struggling with for a long time and that it had answered their prayers. I had people who came with thoughtful, faithful, spiritual experiences and we rejoiced together and were edified together. Both sets of casts, especially, felt spiritual uplift and a sense of mission with each play, even to the point where we had spiritual experiences in feeling presences and angels assisting and participating with us in our work. I won’t go into too much detail there, for its sacred ground for me, but I felt spiritual assistance in bringing those plays to their fulfillment. Again and again, I felt why the Lord had spurred me on in these projects.

However, there was one instance where I doubted myself on this front. The Fading Flower was accepted as part of BYU’s “Writers/Dramatugs/Actors Workshop,” which workshops new plays before producing a staged reading of the piece (I was excited about this since I wasn’t even a BYU student). The play, which deals with some pretty heavy historical realities, especially regarding the practice of polygamy in the 19th century by the LDS Church, hit a couple of the students pretty hard.

One of the students was a wonderful, intelligent, young woman and a feminist who strongly disliked my portrayal of Emma which, fortunately, we fixed to her satisfaction, for I have always been a strong proponent of Emma (I consider myself a kind of feminist myself, by the way). The practice of polygamy in any fashion was something that worked against this young woman’s feminist tendencies, so it was bound to be an uncomfortable topic for her, but she was smart, knowledgeable, and I wasn’t afraid that anything presented was going to take her out for good.

The experience of the other young woman was much harder for me to bear, though. She was a recent Hispanic convert of a couple of years, and had been taught a pretty simplistic version of the Gospel. She had sacrificed a lot, going against her family’s Catholic traditions and moving from Texas to go to BYU and be close to the Church. Her experiences at BYU ruffled her, as she confronted (at least from her perspective) intolerance, judgmentalism, and even some thinly veiled racism. Then there came this play of mine, presenting Joseph Smith as a polygamist (plus other hard facts), all information that she had never encountered before.

Her and I exchanged some long e-mails about the subject, and I did my best to give the context of the issues involved. A good friendship came out of it. However, some time later she later informed me that she had left the Church. She made it sound that it was due to a lot of the other issues she was specifically encountering in the weird culture that is BYU, but I had the feeling that my play certainly hadn’t helped.

I had written the play because of a vivid and prophetic dream I had that spurred me. I felt good throughout the process of writing it and when it was actually performed I, the cast, and many audience members told me the spiritual experiences they had surrounding it. But why then should I even write a play that could inadvertently damage some one’s fledgling faith?

I struggled with that question, but the more I thought and prayed about it, the more convinced I was performing the work the Lord had guided me in. There was a deeper problem at work here… we do not prepare the Saints for the information that is bound to fall in their laps.

It is not my fault that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. I did not create that fact. If you believe him, not even Joseph Smith is at fault for that fact. He was doing as the Lord directed. Yet in the Church we often build up this veil of secrecy, of enforced ignorance. Many of us frown on those who would discuss the less than savory elements of the Gospel and its history.

And it doesn’t only extend to Church History. The Book of Mormon, the Old and New Testaments have own fair share of faith challenging stories. I read a talk once where Elder Jeffrey R. Holland commented on how it said something about the Lord that he put Laban’s death by the hand Nephi within the first eight pages of the Book of Mormon. God wasn’t going to coddle us, he wanted us to face the facts and realize that discipleship in His Kingdom had a price. I look at the graphic and often disturbing stories in the Standard Works and realize that religion– real religion that hasn’t been watered down– is often a hard lesson in the rough nature of truth.

My play The Fading Flower is based on my research about the family of Joseph Smith, years after his martyrdom, especially centering on Emma Smith and her youngest son David Hyrum Smith. Joseph’s widow Emma strived to protect her sons and daughter from the principles which had caused her so much pain in her personal life with Joseph… the principle of polygamy and the “Brighamites” who practiced it. I made a lot of this issue of Emma’s protectiveness. Emma did not want to expose her children to the things and people that had caused her so much struggle. Essentially she wanted to protect them from the truth.

This, in the end, is the cause for the grief and downfall of Emma’s family. It’s Emma’s tragic flaw, this unwillingness to confront the full truth. It’s particularly catastrophic to her youngest son David Hyrum Smith, who not only loses his faith when he confronts the truth about his father’s polygamy, but also loses his sanity and spends the rest of his days in an insane asylum. Near the end of the play, I have David’s adopted sister Julia say, “David did not lose his sanity because he was told the truth in the end. David lost his sanity because he was not told the truth from the beginning. If he hadn’t a false world constructed around him, he would have been able to endure the real one.”

I certainly believe that people still need to learn “line upon line, precept upon precept,” and that we should get “milk before meat.” But I’m saying it now, as I’ve said it before, our enemies are not going to be kind to us in this regard. In this age of easy information, they’re going to shove that meat down our throats and hope that we choke on it. And I have seen just that, time and time again. We’re still feeding the full fledged adults milk, and I’m nervous about the day when they meet some one who has information to give them (without the context) and that our friends and neighbors, and sibling and children, our spouses and parents, they’re going to choke and their faith is going to die.

We often really don’t trust the Lord when He said, “The Truth will make you free.” We take that as some kind of statement about general, esoteric truth, not really applying to the nitty gritty of history and theology and science and anthropology. Yet the Lord makes it painfully clear that if we take that evasive, luke warm track, we are deluding ourselves:

I give you these sayings that you may understand and know how to worship, and know what you worship, that you may come unto the Father in my name, and in due time receive of his fulness….And, verily I say unto you, that it is my will that you should hasten to translate my scriptures, and to obtain a knowledge of history, and of countries, and of kingdoms, of laws of God and man, and all this for the salvation of Zion. Amen (Doctrine and Covenants 93: 19, 53).

To know “what you worship”… that’s a pretty big deal. “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). Yet these are not what many people of faith are being led to. They are told to cover up, not to seek too deep into the mysteries… yet Joseph Smith responds to this kind of reasoning with some unequivocal sayings:

The things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out. Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity—thou must commune with God (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 137).

That communion with God doesn’t come cheap, and it doesn’t come without some struggle. All the experience I have to base this on are my own, but I know that every experience with the Divine I have had has come like Jacob wrestling with the angel… the Lord tries me, tests me. He forces me into a corner, sometimes making me struggle with conflict, even doubt. But after that tempest, the lights emerge from the darkness and enlightenment comes.

I won’t lie. In writing the about hard questions in Mormon History, I have often had to shed my cherished cultural assumptions like snake sheds his outer skin. Underneath, however, I find scales of armor that have been tempered into a true strength and resilience. I know the history, I know the doctrine, I know the context. I’m no longer afraid.