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 .

It is probably not surprising that so many of the nationally-published, succesful YA novels by Mormon authors are about agency — Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, Dan Wells’ I Am Not A Serial Killler, James Dashner’s The Maze Runner. Not only is it a key component of Mormon theology, but it’s also really what YA is all about. One comes of age when one can learn to (or be freed to or free oneself to) make choices (and accept the consequences). But as intensely as the three titles I mention deal with agency, none of them are about it thematically as much as Ally Condie’s Matched. From the title, which refers to the fact that reproductive unions in Condie’s dystopia are arranged/assigned, and the front cover (which features a young woman in a bubble); to the back cover, which includes blurbs with words like free will, choice, rebellion and controlled; to, well, all all those pages in between this is a book about agency.

Condie intensifies the issue of agency by doing what all dystopias do: create a claustrophic, circumscribed, controlled society. A key component to that is the restriction of approved materials for consumption by the populace — or in other words: correlation. I use that term, of course, in the LDS sense to mean a system of education via approved materials that are consistent across the organziation (or in this case — the Society).

As we discover on page 29:

The almost-snow reminds me of a line from a poem we studied this year in Language and Literacy: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” It is one of my favorites of all the Hundred Poems, the ones our Society chose to keep, back when they decided our culture was too cluttered. They created commissions to choose the hundred best of everything: Hundred Songs, Hundred Paintings, Hundred Stories, Hundreds Poems. The rest were eliminated. Gone forever. For the best, the Society said, and everyone believed becuase it made sense. How can we appreciate anything fully when overhwelmed with too much?

Whatever you think about the characters and plot of the novel*, this bit of world-building is genius. Not oh-my-heck-I’ve-never-seen-this-before genius, but brilliant-execution-capturing-of-the-times genius. Condie bottles up all the hand-wringing over information overload, filters it through our (and by our I mean our society, but especially the culture created by Gen X) obsession with top 10 (or top 25 or top 100) lists and then labels it with the marks of correlation** that she has experienced as a post-Harold B. Lee Mormon.

And what’s fascinating about this to me and about my readerly reaction to the novel is not just that I find her transmutation of these elements of recent history captivating, but that these elements work both ways. Yes, this is a dystopia. But because of the way she combines the familiar elements, it’s hard to see the way society has configured itself in Matched as wholly bad — or rather, I can see the appeal. It would be nice, sometimes, if life could be correlated, and if there really was a list of the best of everything that actually was viable, that could actually lead to full appreciation (and, of course, here’s where lists and correlation always breaks down — because the determining the best as a discrete list is impossible, and it never can be the best for every single person and circumstance).  The cultural and educational aspects of the “Hundred” approved works are just the beginning of the dystopia in Matched — I haven’t even discussed the way social relationships, living spaces, work and physical health are regulated/shaped by the Society.

Of course, once you begin thinking about it in a very specific way — once you realize that the lists then lead to all other cultural products being destroyed — then the whole notion is completely horrifying. As it is meant to be. And, if one were a rather introspective reader, one would be tempted to then turn the dystopia, the Society back on to our own society and begin to wonder about both how we correlate and list as well as how we deal with the overload of information. I don’t know that Matched provides any amazing answers (although we really do need to see where it’s going with the rest of the novels), but in the way it dramatizes our messy, disjointed perhaps even schizophrenic relationship to cultural products totally works. And works in a way, that maybe, just maybe, is as effective as it is because Ally Condie is a Mormon. So at the risk of engaging in the sort of list-making the work itself decries, I nominate Matched for immediate inclusion in to the Mormon literature*** YA canon. And I look forward to far more sophisticated and in-depth literary criticism that treats the theme of agency in this and the other recent YA books by LDS authors.

*And my armchair reaction to Matched was that I enjoyed it quite a bit and that I’d take Ally Condie over Meyer and Dashner any day even if she doesn’t quite (yet) reach the heights of Wells or Hale.

**For our non-LDS readers. Correlation in a nutshell is the standardizing of materials to be used in teaching as well as the administration across all LDS congregations. It’s basically standardized curriculum and policies/procedures. Of course, most large organizations (and school districts) engage in the practice to some degree or another. But the LDS Church is, perhaps, particularly thorough and effective in its implementation of it.

***As you may know around here we use the Association for Mormon Letters definition of Mormon literature which is any narrative work that is by, for or about Mormons.

And yet, sometimes he just rubs my believing-Mormon-skin the wrong way with his cursory engagement with Mormonism, something that’s simply secondary to and arising from his academic interest in literature, faith, and culture. Since he’s a newcomer to the still-blossoming field of Mormon studies* and an outsider to the LDS faith, I can’t fault him for this engagement and for getting some things wrong every now and then. Heck, cultural Mormons are a peculiar lot with an equally peculiar history. Putting things together about the religion can be difficult even for those with a lifetime commitment to it.

But as I was catching up on some FHS Professor posts I’ve fallen behind on, I felt compelled to chime in this morning and to set the record straight, as it were (though I’m sure my straight is still fairly skewed), by referring the good doctor to Reading Until Dawn. Of course, this has something to do with the need for self-promotion. But, it also has something to do with my faith in the strength of Mormon literary scholarship, especially, in this case, Eric’s “Saturday’s Werewolf” (a revised version of which, by the way, will be published in a forthcoming issue of Sunstone [get your teaser here] along with a revised version of “Toward a Mormon Gothic“).

The setup: In his November 18 post in response to Stephenie Meyer’s answer to a fan’s question about the source for her imprinting werewolves (”Stephenie Meyer New Moon Q&A: Imprinting“), Granger suggests two sources beyond the one Meyer gives for this peculiar, primal relationship between imprinter and imprintee (read the post for her answer): (1) the institution of polygamy’s overabundance of man/child relationships and (2) the notion of premortal coupling. He ties Meyer to the first by suggesting that Twilight is a response to John Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, a book published, as Granger is quick to point out, “the month Mrs. Meyer had her [series-inspiring] dream and [... that] is filled to the brim with nightmare stories about polygamist crimes against young women as well as the nightmare of the Mountain Meadows massacre.” He continues—and this is what provoked my response: “Twilight is, I suggest, on several levels a Mormon woman’s response to Krakauer’s attack on her faith.”

Here’s what I said:

How so? Unless you’re privy to more information about Meyer than I am (i.e., that she’s read or is even aware of Krakauer’s narrative, something, in my mind, she’d have to do/be aware of in order to so specifically respond), this seems like something of a jump to me, like you’ve already formed an opinion on the issue and are stretching to find evidence (however thin) to support that opinion. Sure, Meyer is aware of Mormonism’s polygamist past and I’m sure she’s struggled with it in one way or another, though I don’t know how that struggle has influenced her personal understanding of the faith or, more apropos to this post, her work as a novelist.

But Eric Jepson (in the essay Sharon mentions in comment one) makes what to me is a more compelling connection between Meyer, Mormon doctrine, and Mormon (literary) history: imprinting as a manifestation of the premortal romance. This narrative trope is based in the LDS doctrine that we existed as spirits in the presence of God prior to mortal birth, an official teaching that gave rise to the folk doctrine of premortal coupling (i.e., that male and female spirits promised to find one another on Earth and to marry for eternity), which is conveyed in a sampling of non-official LDS narrative art. Jepson takes up two of these—Nephi Anderson’s 1898 novel Added Upon and Douglas Stewart’s 1973 musical Saturday’s Warrior (the latter is still a popular cultural reference in Mormon circles)—though I’m aware of at least two more: Susa Young Gate’s 1909 novel John Stevens’ Courtship (which was serialized before Anderson’s Added Upon was published; which may have been a source for his own, more expansive treatment of the premortal romance; and which was a response to the LDS Church’s [1890] manifesto putting an official end to polygamy) and Carol Lynn Pearson’s 1977 musical My Turn on Earth[, though this one is more simply about keeping premortal promises in general than it is about realizing a premortal romance].

This folk doctrine (which has been shot down by LDS Church leaders, most notably, as Jepson points out, by Spencer W. Kimball) seems a far more likely source for Meyer’s notion of imprinting than Krakauer’s discussion of Fundamentalist Mormon polygamy. (And though they share common roots, Fundamentalist Mormon does not equal Latter-day Saint.)

I’m likely to come back to this idea of Twilight Studies meets Mormon Studies in the not-too-distant future with a post on my RMMLA experience (it’s been on the backburner for over a month) and a post in response to one of Granger’s recent interviews (on the backburner for a couple of months). But I felt this interaction was worth copying here, if only to show more of how non-Mormon critics are engaging the Mormonism of Twilight; to suggest, perhaps, ways Mormon scholars can (fruitfully?) respond by referring to our own literary and cultural history; and to solicit your feedback on any/all of the above.

———-

*I place him in this position (something he may not do himself) because he takes up issues of Mormonism as they relate to Twilight.

I love the form; I’ve always have a, always had a love/hate relationship with comics: I love the form, but some of the content are not to my liking.

Yeah, I’ve read you’re not a big superhero fan.

No, I’m not. I’ve done a lot of superheroes, but basically I’d rather have more uh, less fantastic stories.I  read — I read also that you, um, prefer war stories over other types because of the Cuban Revolution? Would you agree with that?

Well, not really, what I said is I prefer war stories because having been raised in the 1930s in Cuba and having seen a lot of fighting, a lot of terrorism around me. The first memory of my life was my house being surrounded by a mob —

Oh dear.

— and shot to pieces by a mob.

Mmhmm.

When I think of war stories, of the children, I think of the grownups going through all that horror and it is very real to me; and superheroes flying in the air are not very real to me, frankly.

I can understand that.

Yes. So, you know, and, uh, also, during my teens, that was the time of World War Two, and the movies and the newsreels and the air just sizzled with the idea of winning the war against the Nazis.

Mmhmm.

And so so that’s very much in my consciousness. And the two kinds of stories that I like are either war stories where you see an ordinary person become a hero —

Mmhmm.

— or stories of uh human relations.

Last time, Ric Estrada told us that his work, though not strictly “Mormon” in content, contained “a certain amount of compassion and a certain amount of . . . spirituality.” And he found that, generally, such were easier to do within the confines of real life, than, say, when inventing Power Girl.

Unfortunately for Brother Estrada, this past century has been a century dominated by superheros. If the (admittedly incomplete) list of comic credits at the Comic Book Database is correct, his output was roughly two superhero stories to every more realistic outing. Of course, that ignores comics work like the New Testament Stories he did for the Church and his editorial cartoons and book illustrations (which a quick Google Book Search reveal to be quite literally voluminous), to say nothing of his journalism and prose fiction. His heart was always grounded in the real.

But real in content. His style has never approached the photorealistic, nor did he wish it too. In a 1996 essay I’ve not been able to track down (but which is quoted extensively here), Estrada said, “My so-called ‘lyricism’ stems from my approach to drawing as flat design rather than as three-dimensional bulk.”

Don Mangus, the author of the essay I lifted that quotation from, says that “perhaps because of [his] extensive fine arts training . . . Estrada continued experimenting and questing for personal and artistic growth” — all the while maintaining his distinctive cartoony style.

As Estrada told me, “Of course I have several styles: the comic-book style, the goofy style for books, the advertising style for advertising . . . .”

Below appear three examples of his work courtesy of blogger Daniel Best who owns this original art. All three are superhero-free, stories that take place in the real world, but all three are quite different as well. Behold:

This is the closest of the three to superheros. No questions that these helmeted musclemen will be superheroesque in their capacity for violence. But no flying, no running near the speed of light. This is violence that reflects reality. To lift another Estrada quotation from Mangus (this one originates from the essay “War, You Said?”), “I grew up in Havana in the 1930s, amid terrorist bombs, shells shrieking overhead and rifle fire cracking in the streets. My first memories are of bullets biting into the walls of my home and houses burning in the night. Memories of fear and imminent death, of men’s hatred and children’s dread.” Which does not sound that far removed from hordes of maurauding Mongols sweeping down from the steppe to leave death and destruction in their path.

I’m a little nervous to psychoanlyze myself, but this is, no question, my favorite Estrada drawing yet. Their hair hasn’t aged well, but two beautiful people in pain surrounded by some of the cutest pigeons ever put on paper — what’s not to like?

Yes. That is Weclome Back, Kotter. If you’re about ten years older than me, this was your favorite show and you may even have this comic in a box in your mother’s garage.

Ric Estrada’s oeuvre represents, more than anything, two things:

1. His need and love for the act of creation.
2. His willingness to take any job to support his family, even Batman.

This intersection between art and family will be the subject of the next portion of this series. But while I’m finishing it, that might provide a good point for discussion: For the professional artist, working to feed the family, which sort of jobs should be accepted? Which lines that the artist draws are reasonable? Which are moral? Which are artistically unacceptable? Which are merely petty snobbery? When your passion is also your day job, how do you know when you’re doing which?

Well?

Here’s the relevant excerpt:

The erotic relationship between Bella and Edward is what makes this book—and the series—so riveting to its female readers. There is no question about the exact nature of the physical act that looms over them. Either they will do it or they won’t, and afterward everything will change for Bella, although not for Edward. Nor is the act one that might result in an equal giving and receiving of pleasure. If Edward fails—even once—in his great exercise in restraint, he will do what the boys in the old pregnancy-scare books did to their girlfriends: he will ruin her. More exactly, he will destroy her, ripping her away from the world of the living and bringing her into the realm of the undead. If a novel of today were to sound these chords so explicitly but in a nonsupernatural context, it would be seen (rightly) as a book about “abstinence,” and it would be handed out with the tracts and bumper stickers at the kind of evangelical churches that advocate the practice as a reasonable solution to the age-old problem of horny young people. (Because it takes three and a half very long books before Edward and Bella get it on—during a vampiric frenzy in which she gets beaten to a pulp, and discovers her Total Woman—and because Edward has had so many decades to work on his moves, the books constitute a thousand-page treatise on the art of foreplay.) That the author is a practicing Mormon is a fact every reviewer has mentioned, although none knows what to do with it, and certainly none can relate it to the novel; even the supercreepy “compound” where the boring half of Big Love takes place doesn’t have any vampires. But the attitude toward female sexuality—and toward the role of marriage and childbearing—expressed in these novels is entirely consistent with the teachings of that church. In the course of the four books, Bella will be repeatedly tempted—to have sex outside of marriage, to have an abortion as a young married woman, to abandon the responsibilities of a good and faithful mother—and each time, she makes the “right” decision. The series does not deploy these themes didactically or even moralistically. Clearly Meyer was more concerned with questions of romance and supernatural beings than with instructing young readers how to lead their lives. What is interesting is how deeply fascinated young girls, some of them extremely bright and ambitious, are by the questions the book poses, and by the solutions their heroine chooses.

What’s interesting is that although technically Flanagan is correct about Bella making the “right” choices, there are also Mormons who are uncomfortable with some of the other choices she makes. In addition, I’m somewhat amused by all the people who have felt (or been) compelled (and that includes us here at AMV) to write about Twilight and how much our reactions betray our attitudes towards certain feminist issues as well as literary value and Mormonism.

* This is no knock on those who do. We all have varying tolerance levels for gadflies c.f. Camille Paglia, Ben Stein, Noam Chomsky, etc.

** It’ll be interesting to see if Reading Until Dawn can get us beyond some of the basic reactions that tend to come up repeatedly.

Or maybe you’re just indifferent.

Whatever the case, I don’t think Stephenie Meyer’s going away any time soon; and with the highly anticipated release of Summit Entertainment’s Film—coming tomorrow to a theater near you!—it’s increasingly difficult to escape the hype.

In mid-September, Ellen Degeneres had Meyer on her show to talk Twilight (though they didn’t discuss anything that hadn’t already been said and that’s not readily available on Meyer’s website). Last week, Entertainment Weekly dubbed Meyer “Entertainer of the Year” and roughly two weeks before that, they headlined an in-depth interview with the writer “about the Rob Pattinson casting controversy, Breaking Dawn’s mixed reception, the deal with Edward and Bella’s big [onscreen] kiss, and what she’s working on next.” And this past weekend, USA Weekend’s featured story was “Twilight: The Story Behind this Season’s Biggest Page-to-Screen Sensation” in which Brian Truitt calls Meyer “publishing’s newest literary superstar.”

As a student of (Mormon) literature and culture, as a cultural/literary critic, and in my capacity as creator and editor (with Laura) of Reading Until Dawn, an online literary journal devoted to discussing Meyer and her work (still soliciting submissions, by the way!), this cultural excitement/investment/passion (however you choose to see it) intrigues—and baffles—me. Hence, when Truitt asks, “What […] is the appeal of [Meyer’s] […] dark vampire tales?”, I can’t be completely content with the answer he gives us (right from Meyer’s mouth): “We love to be scared,” she says. “But most of the monsters that you see are disgusting. They are usually oozing something. Vampires are the only ones who are dangerous and scary, and, at the same time, they’re hot.”

Aside from vampires being, in Meyer’s eyes, non-disgusting, non-oozing monsters that are, at the same time, dangerous, scary, and hot, what rests beneath our cultural fascination with Twilight? In my introduction to the first edition of Reading Until Dawn, I point to the realism of the novels’ world and to their “narcotic effect” on readers—on the “physiological response” they seem to evoke. And in a short article that’s docketed for the Summer ’09 issue of Dialogue, I intimate the story’s ties to the always popular Gothic tradition, briefly reading Meyer’s vampires against Freud’s notion of the uncanny, a psychological concept that ties deeply to our experiences with the literarily sublime and the emotion of terror. In addition, William points to the erotic attraction of the books.

In honor (as it were) of Twilight’s birth into cinematic reality, what do you AMV readers think? What rests beneath the incessant appeal of Meyer’s world?

I would love to read some in-depth explorations of both of these works (and maybe even write it), but in the interest of sparking some discussion and hopefully getting more Mormons to read these books, I thought I’d post a few things. These are sort of spoilers, but not really.

But before I get to the Mormon elements — these books are very much part of the current trend in high fantasy (one that OSC has championed, actually) for magic systems that are robust, bounded and physical) where the magic has a cost and a physics (albeit metaphysical ones), where heroes make major mistakes out of pride or ignorance or immaturity, where the enemies aren’t wholly evil, where deception is a major aspect to the plot, where decision making and leadership is just as important as physical/magical prowess.  They both also have some killer action scenes, and their magic systems are quite cool.

1. Both feature voices from the dust e.g. ancient records (one even written on metal plates) that help the protagonists defeat their enemies. But that also require a certain amount of interpretation, a likening of the records to themselves.

2. Both works have a certain conservation of good and evil — an opposition in all things approach. And a metaphysics that places a huge emphasis creation, and creation using the matter at hand.

3. Both have some fascinating things to say about leadership, and I think a particularly Mormon exploration of leadership — how one inspires people in spite of ones own failings, how one reaches people who aren’t ready for change, how one keeps from becoming a zealot, how one saves as many as possible with limited resources and time, etc.

4. Both have Holy Ghost like moments where the protagonists struggle to tune in to what the supernatural (or more like hypernatural or natural-but-more-refined) forces on their side. This leads to some lovely scenes — there is a baptism-like scene in the secone Runelords book that’s just amazing.

5. Both place a huge emphasis on couples as the main protagonists. And both feature strong female characters and sensitive male characters. I’ll make no claims that these are feminist works. But the nature of the relationships and the strengths of the female leads, in particular, seem to be very much in a Joseph Smith/Emma or Alvin Maker/Peggy mold. Indeed, Iome and Gaborn in Runelords and Vin and Elend in Mistborn come across (and I don’t mean this in an insulting way) as quite similar to many of the young, well-educated, cosmopolitan American Mormon couples I know. Granted these books feature extreme situations, but there’s a whiff of the Mormon couples who have succeeded in the American meritocracy, I think.

6. Runelords features a very interesting political-social-religious philosophy that’s centered around the family.

7. Mistborn is in the end very much an enacment of Brigham Young’s maxim that all truth can be circumscribed in to one great whole.

8. Certain langauge/terminology creeps in — that doesn’t mean that it’s used in a Mormon way, but they add a certain Mormon tint to the works. There are, for example, “Endowments” in Runelords.

9. Finally, I’d say that there’s a certain overall Book of Mormon flavor to these two series. The movement of armies, the bloody battles, the using of “spiritual” power to try and halt the bloodshed and save some people — yes, all part of the fantasy genre and so maybe not all that different, but further work is justified, I think.

There’s probably more, but I’ll stop now.

Now, readers can fully enjoy these works without any knowledge of Mormonism. And just because these elements are there, doesn’t necessarily mean that the works have anything profound to say about Mormonism. But, I found that they resonated with my Mormonism. Anybody else have the same experience?

* Farland has extended his Runelords series (it’s up to 7 books now, but it’s the initial quartet that’s of most interest, in my opinion).

The way she pressed on through his miasma of reluctance amused him even as he was baffled by her insistence that he must incorporate himself without delay for some outmoded buried alive ritual involving water and that it couldn’t wait for the next time he condescended to take on flesh (which would probably be never — 11 being a nice number to stop at) and yet he let her go on even though she was so annoying that he wanted to flick her away streaming layers of avatar behind her — send her packing back to her plane full of meatspacers with low budget rendering and didn’t the Mormons have money for better gear or maybe they had been too slow converting their physical holdings to virtual ones but he was too lazy to look it up and perhaps it took more resources than he thought to make their massive temple virtually unhackable (and my but how he still enjoyed that worn out joke — the only nostalgia he allowed himself these days) and maybe it would be amusing to toss a leg or two at it for another attempt and now he was kind of bored with the earnest tone and yet there was a certain gleam in her voice as though she though she thought she was getting through to him or maybe even making fun of him for letting his guard down and allowing her cheap filter buster to bring her through to his magestic presence because he was in a weird mood to see what the code would drag in and he even batted away a particularly nasty amoeba that had trailed in behind her and was about to swallow her and maybe he should just swallow her and really did they think that he was going to hand over ten percent of his processing power and didn’t she know that he had started religions with more adherents than the entire LDS — meatspace included — and yet he would like a peek inside that temple although maybe they hadn’t changed the ceremonies much since the last leak and still she rambled on and he could tell she thought this latest tactic was her ace in the hole but really why would he want to die on the off chance that he could become a god in some other ‘verse when he pretty much already was one.

This last time we attended, however, something stood out to me which I believe will remain with me for the rest of my life. This epiphany centered around authors Shannon Hale (author of young adult fantasy novels such as Goose Girl, Enna Burning, River of Secrets and the Newberry award winning novel Princess Academy– not to mention my wife’s favorite writer) and Stephenie Meyer (best selling author of the vampire romances, the Twilight series, and also her new sci-fi thiller/romance The Host). It almost seemed as if there was a spotlight on them during the entire conference in my mind. I was intrigued not only by the two women themselves, but by what was happening between them. They were attached at the hip, eating together, constantly chatting up a storm with each other and even breaking the rules a bit and attending all of the same group discussions with each other (people were supposed to be assigned to different groups in each session so that it wouldn’t be cliquey and that we would get to know a wider, inter-disciplinary range of people). It was almost as if they were two Jr. High BFFs (Best Friends Forever, for those who haven’t kept up on pre-teen lingo). I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of them had gone up to go the restroom, that the other would have raised her hand and asked if she could go too. And this almost claustrophobic closeness in my mind was absolutely, remarkably refreshing. To see these two very accomplished writers, who are established and famous in their respective fields and markets, cling to each other, in my opinion, was like what it would have been to see David and Jonathan form the bands of friendship, instead of rivalry.

To get a better picture to see what I was seeing, I think it’s important to note my observations about both women in this setting:

Shannon Hale was exuberent, an absolute ray of sunshine. Warm, talkative, opinionated (I mean that as the most positive of terms), confident, animated, intelligent, beautiful and really, really, really funny. I mean, she was absolutely hilarious. She was never hesitent to throw in her opinion on a subject, nor was she hesitent to give some one a good natured ribbing. The kind of person who would look you straight in the eye because she was neither afraid that you were superior to her, but neither was she ever looking down on you. You felt like you were on equal ground with her, if not in talent, then as a human being. I was surpised that after one of the chats she took a good deal of time to talk to my wife and I, relative nobodies compared to who else was in the room. Never talked down to us, never seemed impatient to get away. Just a lovely and charming woman, that made my wife’s day– not to mention my own.

If Shannon Hale was the sun, then Stephenie Meyer was the moon. Quiet, polite, slightly hesitent in her speech, kind, shy, with a gentle beauty. Quite the opposite of what one would expect from the woman who knocked off J.K. Rowling from the New York Times best sellers list. She was not only one of the humblest writers I have ever met, but one of the humblest people I have ever met. Period. I had the chance to talk her privately for a few minutes and I discovered what is typical of her kind of personality: talk to them one on one and that’s when they open up. Away from the stares of the public, you positively find them to be what you had only assumed them to be before: a wonderful, good hearted, insightful individual. I asked her about the upcoming film version of Twilight and she was very open with me, talking about the initial fears she had, especially with the first draft of the script (which, I later looked up, had butchered the story and wasn’t a faithful adaptation at all), but how a different script saved the day and she’s quite pleased with the outcome.

It could have been my imagination, but at first the ironic thing about Stephenie Meyer among this group of Mormon artists seemed to be that she was almost… intimidated. Perhaps it was because she felt she was among “Artists,” with a capital A. What I mean by that is that certain artistic personalities can look down on anything that is populist, or, excuse the term, for the “unwashed masses.” That’s an exaggeration, of course, a stereotype, but that’s the sense I got. She seemed to be afraid that she was at a conference full of people who were critical of her work, despite its overwhelming popularity and unabashed fans. Again, this could be me projecting this on her, but whatever the case was, she certainly wasn’t broadcasting her fame, nor using her bragging rights, nor even holding her chin up high. Instead, at the beginning of the conference she seemed almost embarrassed, as if she didn’t know what to do with herself. Of course, I don’t believe this particular group thought any less of Stephenie Meyer. If anything, they were feeling the same thing– rather awed to have this very famous personality in their midst. I certainly know that’s how I felt at first.

And then comes Shannon Hale. She literally took Stephenie Meyer by the arm and was instantly her bosom buddy. Not that their friendship hadn’t before this moment, mind you. How Mrs. Hale told it, if I can remember it correctly, she saw the success that Mrs. Meyer was having and said to herself something to the effect of, “She’s going to need a friend.” So she e-mailed her and they became instant friends. And I think Shannon Hale was very perceptive in this. Sure, it’s obvious that fame can be heady and thrilling and tantalizing. But it must be awful lonely, for as soon as some one makes a name for themself, there are going to be jealous individuals who will want to take that name, tear it down and “humble” it beneath their cruel heels.

And this is one of the reasons that I am so impressed with Shannon Hale. Here she was, a Newberry winner, an established, prolific author and a darn fine writer, whose sparse but poetic (almost elemental) prose, and well realized characters seem to spurt fire and wind and water and life from the page. And then comes Stephenie Meyer, a first time writer who admittedly told Time Magazine that, “I don’t think I’m a writer; I think I’m a storyteller. The words aren’t always perfect.” Here was an obscure, Mormon housewife from Arizona who catapulted into fame and fortune, simply because she had a vivid dream about a vampire romance and decided to write it down. It would have been tempting to any writer to say, “Oh, here I have strived for my reputation as a writer, worked very hard to perfect my craft, and here comes a freshman author and woos the world on her first try. Does she really deserve it? Is it really literature? Is she deserving?”

Not so with Shannon Hale. Instead of being a jealous hearted spoil sport who can’t identify with any work that falls out of her narrow definition of “art”– instead this most deserving of women looks at this other very vulnerable woman who has been thrust into a whole new world and she says, “She’s going to need a friend.”

This, I think, is something that deserves attention, quiet and intimate as it may be. Artists can be a contentious, avarice eyed lot, if they feed their insecurities and egos too much. But at this Mormon Artists Retreat, I found that the vast majority, if not the entire congregation of this group of Mormon Artists had something else entirely in their hearts– they truly had let their religion seep in not only their art, but in their relationships as artists. And there was no better example of this kind of love that weekend than Shannon Hale and Stephenie Meyer.

I preface this review with a confession: I’m an unabashed fan of romantic comedies. I’ve read/viewed more Jane Austen stories than even my wife; the semi-recent film The Holiday made me cry; Two Weeks Notice was a turning point in my life and I consider While You Were Sleeping one of the most charming movies of all time. I don’t feel that it threatens my manhood to admit this, nor my intelligence. I think that the romantic comedy keeps alive within me, despite the inevitable heartache and trials associated with the thing we call Love, the knowledge that Romance and Marriage are still worth every step along their sometimes heart rending, but ultimately fulfilling paths. If they are well produced and truly committed in their performace, the romantic comedy has the ability to move me in meaningful ways that few other kinds of stories can.

And make no mistake about it: Mormon playwright Scott Bronson’s Dial Tones, despite its philosophical and science fiction underpinnings, is a romantic comedy. And a well written, emotionally honest, charming one at that.

Produced at The Covey Center for the Arts through Bronson’s Nauvoo Theatrical Society, Dial Tones begins not with its two lovers, but a Telephone, with a capital T. This particular Telephone, you see, has a personality, has developed over time into an Artificial Intelligence, or AI. It is this Telephone, performing a kind of electronic practical joke, that initially unites our lovers Kelly and Hazel, by causing Kelly’s phone call to his friend to connect with Hazel’s phone instead– several times. Through this process Kelly and Hazel develop a unique relationship, having never met each other, but interacting with each other as “voices in the dark.” And thus our story begins.

The AI Telephone was a point of debate among the little group of friends my wife and I went with. The others considered that the Telephone was an intrusion into the story, that the editorializing it imposed upon the narrative was unnecessary and distracting. Although I did agree to an extent that there were some moments where the Telephone’s monologues could have been cut back slightly and that there were times when it would be best to have the Telephone let Kelly and Hazel carry through their most intimate moments without commentary, I still vigorously defend not only its inclusion, but its centrality to the story.

From a plot stand point, it is the one that creates the initiating incident; sets up the circumstances in which an otherwise implausible relationship can be created; acts as the antagonist and obstacle to the lovers getting together at several key points; and it is the character who has the power to not only create this relationship, but destroy it, if it so chose to do. It is both the most major threat and the most major hope for these two lovers.

But, more importantly, the Telephone, played very capably (and with a nice touch of spunk) by actress Amelia Schow, has an “emotional” journey of discovery that creates a whole new dynamic within the context of the play. In listening to these two humans develop their relationship, the AI has several personal discoveries and crises.

The Telephone senses the “love” these two supposed strangers develop for each other over the phone, and develops a love for them in return. She calls them her “friends” (although they are unaware of her)– the meaning they create then imposes a kind of meaning upon her voiceless life as well. It becomes evident that this poor Telephone is lonely. It feeds off of the relationship created by these two, as a lonely human would feed off the relationships developed within a book or a television series.

As the Telephone philosophizes throughout the play about the Nature of Love (and the AI’s own lack of Nature), it becomes apparent that the AI thinks it needs these two to continue their on-the-phone-but-never-in-reality-relationship so that it can continue to be vicariously fulfilled. If they were ever to meet in real life, then their phone conversations would end and the Telephone would be left without “friends” again. This whole situation seemed very Isaac Asimov to me (and knowing the playwright’s love for sci-fi and fantasy, this didn’t really surprise me), in addition to it being a very compelling premise.

But as intrigued as I was by the AI Telephone, the real heart of this show was in the relationship between Kelly and Hazel. This was not only due to Bronson’s very naturalistic, real dialogue and fleshed out, potent characters, but also to Elwon Bakly and Fallon Hanson’s vulnerable and powerful portrayals of Kelly and Hazel.

Bakly’s picture of Kelly was very human and likable. This is what a real good guy looks like, without pretension or hypocrisy. Struggling between self control and vulnerability, the tension between protecting others and protecting one’s self is at the heart of many a true hero’s inner conflicts. Having seen Bakly in previous Nauvoo Theatrical Society productions (notably Bronson’s Stones and Thom Duncan’s staged reading of Matters of the Heart), I was expecting a very solid, very real performance. He did not fail to deliver.

It is hard to be impartial to Fallon Hanson’s performance of Hazel for me, for Hanson has been in two of my own plays (Farewell To Eden and Legends of Sleepy Hollow), and because of such I feel a strong friendship to her. Fortunately, she made it easy on me and out did any of the previous performances I have seen her give and made it easily apparent to anyone watching the show that she is an actress who should be watched and cultivated. Her almost haunting emotional vulnerability, sharp intelligence and inherent classiness made her one of the most beautiful characters I have seen in years.

Yet even with such strong performances, it would have been a moot point if those characters didn’t connect powerfully on an emotional, spiritual, social and intellectual level. An additional obstacle was created by the story that in trying to do so, they can only use their voices to connect to each other. They cannot touch, they cannot gaze, they cannot sense each other except by listening and talking. They were directed to never look directly at each other throughout the whole play until that very last, crucial moment. Those who are actors know that this is a considerable challenge.

Yet, despite this, it was one of the most powerfully developed relationships I have ever seen on the stage. The chemistry was explosive and the tension almost unnerving. The ache and longing created the same effect in the audience that was happening upon the stage. Like the AI Telephone, we began to love these two people, to consider them our friends.

Add on top of these Bronson’s elegant and expert directing (you can tell much more about a director when he is given minimal materials, than when he is given something akin to Phantom of the Opera’s technical wizardry. There’s nothing to hide behind then), and it reveals that this show was one the favorite pieces of theater that I have seen all year.

My only regret about it is that I saw it on its closing weekend and thus couldn’t proclaim to the whole world to see it. I would have gladly bought another ticket and brought a big group of friends. But that’s one of the beauties of theater. It lives vibrantly like a butterfly, immediate and personal and intimate. But then it dies and it was only we few, we happy few, who were truly able to behold and appreciate its beauty.