Take the story of Meredith, for example. When her husband of fifteen years decides he is gay and leaves her, it is almost unbelievable that she could ever find that “eternal perspective.” But in reading the details of her story you find out that, well, it actually possible for a woman to move forward with faith. Jana Reiss (of Flunking Sainthood fame) is startling–both in her bifurcated path to baptism and her tendency to pray with people at the drop of the hat–but also delightfully familiar in her struggles for devotional perfection. And then there’s the story of Bindu that makes you stop and say, “Wait. There are Mormons in India? I never even though to ask that question.” What is most astounding is how many, many Mormon women are changing the world at large through creative humanitarian forays.

Reading the MWP interviews is a little bit like climbing on a merry-go-round. The stories spin quickly enough and pull you in enough different directions that you think you will be pulled right off the ride. But what you are really experiencing is like centripetal force–something that pulls you in enough directions that you end up being held exactly in the center.

LHC: Do you have any favorite stories that have been shared on MWP?

NM: I think every interview we publish is the best one yet, so it’s hard to pick just a few! What I love about working now with a group of volunteers – I have about half a dozen saintly interview producers who work with me regularly – is that everyone finds different stories interesting. I’m constantly surprised by which interviews on the site go through the roof and which have a more tepid response. A volunteer will suggest a story or pick someone from off our list of nominated women and I’ll think, “Well, I guess that’s okay,” and then when then interview’s published it’ll be hugely popular. Objectively though, the interviews that have been read most are our anonymous interview with the author of Seriously, So Blessed, and our interview with Elaine Bradley, the drummer for the Neon Trees. I am most proud of our forays into the “unspeakable” subjects: our sexual abuse forum, our interviews that discuss eating disorders, infertility, divorce, pornography, homosexuality, adoption, etc. I feel that in these interviews we uncover not the proactive choices a woman makes about her job or how she’s going to spend her time, but the reactive choices about how she’s going to respond to a situation and who she’s really going to be, which are usually even more defining than her hobbies or jobs.

LHC: Are there themes or ideas that come up again and again in the interviews?

NM: The theme that arises in almost every interview is the idea that Heavenly Father knows who this woman is and He is directing her path. Regardless of whether that path leads her to be a drummer in a rock band or the mother of twelve foster children, God knows each woman and acts as a cheerleader, a prompter, a supporter and even an instigator of dreams, ambition and righteous goal setting. The common thread of His presence in these interviews never reveals Him to be an oppressor or a killjoy.

LHC: MWP is coming up on its second year anniversary in January. How has it grown in its second year? What hopes do you have for its future? In what ways can others who are passionate about the stories of Mormon women help out?

NM: Although I launched the MWP in January of 2010 without a distinct publication calendar, we’ve managed to average one new interview per week since that launch. We just published our 114th interview, and we’ve featured women in fifteen countries. There is power in that sheer volume of contemporary Mormon women’s stories. We also introduced this year Snapshot Portraits, which offer our readers the opportunity to submit their own short essays in response to specific prompts.

Our major achievement as an organization this year was to receive our 501©3 status, designating us as a non-profit. The MWP follows in the grand Mormon tradition of being a volunteer endeavor, but we chose to pursue this designation for a few reasons. First of all, it was an issue of establishing our brand as something that is of valuable even outside of the Church community. One of the pieces of feedback we receive time and time again is that members really like to share our interviews with non-member friends because they feel like it looks like and has the quality of a professional endeavor. Of course it takes money for the MWP to look that way, and for us to maintain the website. Even though we don’t need very much money, establishing ourselves as a 501©3 allows us to raise money from official sponsors as well as from private donors. Above and beyond website upkeep, we want to continue doing live events, like our annual Salon, so that the MWP has a physical presence in our community and provides us with a forum to come together as like minded women in person. I also have a dream of being able to subsidize transcription services for our volunteers so they don’t have to spend 5-15 hours transcribing (and sometimes translating) the interviews from the recorded conversation.

I think it’s quite obvious that the MWP approaches the subject of Mormon womanhood from positive, almost culturally apologetic, positioning. Some have called this naïve, that you can think the Lord loves you to bits but it doesn’t make up for the fact that the currency of power is not distributed equally within the institution. I believe there are many valid and important conversations going on online about the role of women in the Church, but I think the MWP plays important role in those conversations by reminding women that our spiritual lives are played out in our relationships, our actions and our prayers, and not in our institutional roles. I’ve had MWP readers tell me they appreciate the safe haven the project offers, the ability to step back and say, “God’s plan for me is real and it is beautiful,” rather than focus on the deficiencies of the modern church. For women who are seeking for a way to be actively involved in forwarding this emboldening vision of Mormon womanhood, I invite them to join us at the MWP. We’re always looking for more interview producers. Reading the interviews, discussing them, sharing them and letting them resonate really is the best way women can support the project.

For more of Neylan McBaine’s writing check out this podcast at The Round Table, this post at By Common Consent, or her articles at Patheos.com and Busted Halo. She has also authored a book, How To Be a Twenty-First Century Pioneer Woman.

Now, besides the gross error that Mormon women aren’t allowed to speak in Church, it’s pretty distressing to me that what characterized this group of women as liberals was that they wanted change tables in the men’s room. Really? Getting the men to help care for the babies? Isn’t that a little quaint? The picture this anecdote paints is one done in broad strokes with inexact coloring where the women come out in an ill-educated, unsatisfied, barefoot-in-the-kitchen kind of way. There is little nuance or subtlety and it is ultimately dissatisfying to me in a very personal way.*

However, what makes this piece stand out from so many other misrepresentations is the fact that there was a group of Mormon women who saw a need and found a way to get it met. They were polite, they were strong, and they got the job done. That’s the kind of Mormon woman I identify with–and the kind of women Neylan McBaine is seeking out and presenting to the world with through her Mormon Women Project. The stories she chronicles are the kind so many, many Mormon women identify with as their own. Subjects covered include women of many nationalities, races, and backgrounds. There are stories about surviving sexual abuse and difficult marriages. There are women who come from long legacies of Mormon membership and new converts. The portraits drawn by MWP are detailed, with many tones and hues, and offer a great richness to the picture of Mormon women.

Neylan graciously agreed to answer some of my questions regarding the project and it’s significance in Mormon culture.

Laura Hilton Craner: You have a unique name. How is it pronounced? Does it have any significant history in your life?

Neylan McBaine: I’m so happy you asked about my name! It’s pronounced “NY – lin,” (The first, stressed syllable rhymes with “high”.) It was my great-grandfather’s surname – John Francis Neylan – and thus my grandmother’s maiden name and my father’s middle name. John Francis Neylan was a powerful and brilliant man who was William Randolf Hearst’s lawyer and best friend and was known for his red-headed Irish temper. In fact, the Joseph Cotten character in “Citizen Kane” is based on my great-grandfather, and he was on the cover of Time magazine in 1935. But even more interesting to me is that he is a genealogical mystery: We can’t find where he came from, who his parents are, where he was born…

How much programming in our genes comes from our ancestors has always been a fascinating subject for me because, quite honestly, I’m uncomfortable with the idea that the choices and personality traits I have made and cultivated in my life are not entirely my own but come from predetermined traits. However, either because of admiration or intrigue or some unknowable connection, I do feel a special kinship with John Francis and am honored to carry his name.

LHC:What inspired you to start the Mormon Women Project? How does it coincide with other work that you’ve done?

NM: Usually when I explain the motivation to start the MWP, I don’t have time or context to explain how my family and my upbringing played a critical role. But since I’ve already introduced you to my great-grandfather and my father’s side of the family, allow me to introduce you now to my mother: the middle of five children born to a humble school teacher of extensive Mormon pioneer heritage. How, you might now ask, did a Mormon girl who grew up in a trailer in Southern California end up marrying a lapsed Catholic of San Francisco high society? The answer was opera. What my parents didn’t share in socioeconomic or religious background was made up for in their love of opera, but the tension between the identities of my two extended families produced in me – the only child of this union – a paradox of interests and influences that has allowed me to have a foot in different worlds: it was my father who pushed me to attend the best schools possible, travel and enjoy the best and most beautiful the world has to offer, and it was my mother who kept me rooted to faith and family.

My mother was a professional opera singer the whole time I was growing up in New York City and, as you might have already guessed, a single mother for much of that time. As a single, working mother with only one child, you wouldn’t imagine her to be the poster child of the Mormon faith. But she was. During the ‘80s and ‘90s, my mother was asked by local church leaders and general authorities to present firesides, perform for church and political leaders, and to appear in official church videos and messages. Her skill as a singer and her willingness to share that talent for the glory of God catapulted her into a position of spokesperson for the Church. As a child witnessing the tremendous affection of church leaders for my mother and, in turn, my mother’s affection for the Church, it never occurred to me that there wasn’t a place in the Church for women whose lives don’t fit a mold.

My mother also did a beautiful job of teaching me that getting the best education I could, working as hard as I could, and enjoying the beauty of the world as much as I could – all those good qualities my dad had brought to the table – were actually a way of magnifying God’s presence in my life and honoring Him. Our doctrine encourages us to aim high, and she fiercely taught that performing at the “worldly” standard that my earthly dad expected was actually the way I could magnify my Heavenly Father’s expectations for me. “The world” was never a scary, evil place in my home; on the contrary, it was a glorious gift to be enjoyed and learned from. It was simply my job to bring God into it through my active participation.

But when I left my home in New York and started functioning in a broader community of LDS women, I realized that I was unusual in feeling that my doctrine was the very thing that gave me permission to explore my potential. Even at Yale, where I went to college, I encountered Mormon women who were pursuing education sheepishly, fighting a constant internal struggle between the seeming paradox of their innate gifts and the kinds of pursuits they believed were “right.” I saw these internal struggles continue among some of the women in my San Francisco ward after college, culminating in one very dear friend leaving the Church over these issues and several more since then, and I was forced finally to ask myself the question, “What does it mean to be a Mormon woman? Is it a limiting proposition, or an emboldening one?”

Both because I think it is a much happier way to live and also because I fiercely defend that it is true, I see being a Mormon woman as an emboldening way to live. In contemplating an effective and positive way to assert that belief so that it might take root in our broader culture, I turned to the age-old tradition of story-telling. My mom had been held up throughout my childhood as a woman for Mormons to look to; why couldn’t I take some of the other women I admired and share their stories in a similar way? In Mormon culture, we don’t have a systematic way to tell the stories of our women, the way many of our men do in formal speaking and writing assignments. My goal was to create an environment of “deliberate disorientation” for the reader: by sorting through hundreds of stories about women who prioritize the gospel and yet still make unique and intriguing choices about how to maximize their potential, it is impossible for a reader to pick any one story and say, “This is who my church wants me to be or that is what my church wants me to be.” The breadth of examples forces the reader to turn within herself and ask, “What does the Lord want me to be?”

LC: You are not only an accomplished writer, but you are also the mother of three young girls. How has being a woman in the Church and then having daughters to raise in the Church influenced MWP?

NM: Like many other Mormon mothers, the foremost goal I have for my daughters is that they have a testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. (And that they love music comes in a close second.) But I recognize that, at some point, they will have to define for themselves what it means to be a Mormon woman and decide if they are emboldened or limited by that definition. For many Mormon women, that internal struggle surfaces in young adulthood or even older as they come to terms with the Church’s gendered institutional structure and so I don’t expect my little girls to self-define for quite some time yet. However, I believe the MWP can play a role in their lives now by establishing a paradigm for that self-definition in which doubt of God’s intentions regarding His daughters is not a factor in their construction of themselves. In other words, as they grow up with the MWP as a presence in their spiritual lives, they will launch their self-defining journey from a solid foundation of trust in the Lord’s support for them as women.

Growing up with Mormon women I admired allowed me to sidestep the question “What does God think of me as a girl?” and focus instead on developing a very personal relationship with Him as my Heavenly Father. I am trying the best I can to provide a cleared path of spiritual development for my own girls as well.

Tune in tomorrow for Part II: Emboldening Women (Through Story)

For more of Neylan McBaine’s writing check out this podcast at The Round Table, this post at By Common Consent, or her articles at Patheos.com and Busted Halo. She has also authored a book, How To Be a Twenty-First Century Pioneer Woman.

*Now, now, I know this interview was about Romney and the anecdote was meant to show how he was able to deal with politics within a charged religious setting. But still. Gross factual error and dirty diapers? Come on.

For more E.M. Tippetts, visit her author site. Emily as writes science fiction and fantasy. Visit emilymah.com or follow her on Twitter.

I read the Amazon description of Paint Me True. Could you expand on it just a bit? Without giving out too many spoilers can you tell me a little more about Eliza and the scruffy video gamer?

Eliza is the last surviving daughter in a family cursed with the BRCA gene mutation, which makes the carriers susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer. On top of this, the family’s had awful luck. Women don’t tend to see their fortieth birthdays and Eliza’s lost two sisters, two aunts, and a lot of cousins. Of all her female relatives on her mother’s side, only her Aunt Nora survives, so these two share a very close bond as survivors in a silent war. It’s Aunt Nora who suggested that Eliza follow her dreams and become an artist and who continues to give emotional support as Eliza struggles financially. At the opening of the book, Eliza is living rent free in her stepmother’s old house in Portland. She’s thirty years old, and about to age out of the singles ward. None of the daring life decisions she’s made have paid off. She’s broke, single, and there’s no end to either condition in sight.

Len, the scruffy nerd, works as a sysadmin at a law firm and likes to spend his free time playing video games. He’s had a crush on Eliza for a long time, but he’s aware of the fact that she’s only dating him because she has no other prospects. At the beginning of the book, he’s finally coming around to the idea that he doesn’t deserve to be treated this way. I assume most readers will identify with him in the first scene, as I think he is the most sympathetic character.

Your previous novel for the LDS Market has fairly strong Mormon elements, in fact it was about an LDS convert. How does Mormonism figure into Paint Me True?

All of the main characters are LDS, though not all are active. Eliza’s at an age (30) when she’s still considered young by American standards, but is verging on an old maid by Mormon standards, so she feels trapped in a netherworld. If she stays true to her faith, she’ll stand out as an unmarried woman in a family ward. If she leaves the faith, she’ll have to make her way in mainstream culture, and she doesn’t have the first clue how to do that. She’s never been on a date with a non-Mormon.

And as with all my LDS novels, there are prayers and revelations that let you know my character isn’t going it alone. It’s written from a religious person’s worldview.

Why did you decide to publish it as an ebook through Amazon Digital Services (ADS)? [Wm adds 1/23 at 11:10 am: the novel is also available on Smashwords and for the Nook at BN.com. I focused on Amazon because it tends to lead to the most sales, but don't forget those other platforms if you are thinking of self-publishing.]

My main goal in life and writing is to make it as a science fiction and fantasy writer, so if it makes sense, my LDS and romance books have been sort of a hobby, something else I did on the side for fun. The usual contracts offered by LDS publishers are not worth the hassle to me. They tend to be grabby, demanding way more rights than is good for either party, and in my experience these companies are used to working with people desperate to be published authors, and that isn’t me. As an attorney who’s worked with a lot of writers, I do know what a standard publishing contract from a national house looks like, and I’m not interested in settling for less in order to get published in such a small niche as the LDS market. The prospect of not ever getting published in LDS fiction doesn’t scare me.

When the indie publishing movement got underway, it looked like a lot of fun. I decided to join up with my romance pen name so that my science fiction and fantasy prospects wouldn’t be affected one way or the other. I also decided that I really needed to learn how to build a platform as a writer, as this is becoming more and more necessary, so again, I figured I’d try it out with my romance pen name so that if I failed miserably, the speculative fiction writer in me would escape unscathed.

Do you have any tips you could share for other authors who are interested in publishing through ADS?

Yes, I’d say first of all, examine why you’re doing this. If you have a huge stack of rejection letters, be open to the possibility that there is a good reason. Publishing is a business. You’ll succeed or fail based on the quality of your product and your marketing efforts. Secondly, I’d say be ready to work your tail off on marketing. Don’t expect to sell any copies if you don’t work for those sales. To put this in perspective: there are 8 million Kindle books on Amazon. When I sold my first copy, I was ranked somewhere in the 100,000 range, which means that I outranked 7.9 million other books by making one sale. When I say most Kindle books don’t go anywhere, I mean nearly all Kindle books don’t go anywhere. No one is going to trawl through all those titles to discover your genius, and someone who works harder will beat you, no matter how inferior their product. Last of all, I’d say enjoy it. Find what’s fun about it, because if you aren’t having fun, there’s little reason to bother. Even if you are ultimately a success, you’ll start out with months making little to no money and the very real prospect that It might not get better. I have a lot of fun designing the chapter headings and putting in graphics. I love being able to sell a book that looks pretty (to me, at least!) And I love seeing what kinds of outreach to fans move copies. It’s liberating to know that I can make some difference here.

What are you digging right now in terms of art? (Mormon-themed or not; fiction or not)

I read a lot of children’s books these days, and I love my Kindle Fire because I can display them in color and let my boys turn the pages.

What else you currently working on?

I’m writing another LDS novel, working title: Castles on the Sand. It’s starting to roll forward with its own momentum, but I’ve got some characters whom I really need to figure out. I’ll be spending the next few days daydreaming up a storm as I try to understand who they are and how they’re likely to behave in various circumstances — I need to understand that before I start trying to move the plot forwards.

And then I’m always working on a short story that I hope to sell to a good short fiction market. I’ve sold two stories to Analog and two to Black Gate and I’d like to maintain a relationship with both. That’s where, in the speculative fiction market, you’re likely to get noticed by editors and agents.

Thanks, Emily!

The very first question that came to mind when I saw the title was: why is it titled after a song by the Smiths? Let me restate that: why is it titled after a *great* song by the Smiths. One of my personal favorites.

“Death of a Disco Dancer” is definitely one of my all-time Smith’s favorites; actually, it’s one of my all-time favorite songs, period.  As I was writing the novel, I knew that there would be death — physical, intellectual and social — that a few of the different characters would experience.  I also knew that one of the characters, the narrator’s Grandmother, would suffer from dementia and would be obsessed with a Saturday Night Fever album cover (which I’ve always thought was an absolutely hilarious and ridiculous image, in a very ‘70s sort of way).  So, with these ideas percolating in the back of my mind — that there are different types of “death” or catastrophe in life — and the fact that the narrator’s grandmother was obsessed with arguably the most recognizable pop culture image of the somewhat unfortunate disco era, as I was driving home from work one day, the Smiths’ “Death of a Disco Dancer” came on.  The first line of the song, says, very heavily and melancholically, “The death of a disco dancer, well it happens a lot ‘round here…”  And, with that, it just clicked.  I thought it was, like any great Smith’s song, goofy, ridiculous, enigmatic and yet poignant, and it seemed like a perfect match for the entire tone of the novel.  From then on, despite a universality of raised eyebrows from those I shared the novel with, I knew there could be no other title.

And then let’s get this out of the way: “How Soon is Now” is their best song, yes or no? And if no, what candidates would you offer up instead?

I definitely agree.  I think that any discussion of great Smith’s songs has to start and end with “How Soon is Now.”  In fact, I was just driving in the car and it came on the radio.  It’s one of those songs that is so good, was so cutting edge, that it always manages to sound contemporary.

A bunch of people have asked me if there will be a sequel to The Death of a Disco Dancer or if I can see myself further exploring any of these characters in a future novel.  I’ve joked with others (and I’m only half kidding) that I think it would be a lot of fun to follow the narrator, Todd Whitman (who is both an 11 year-old and a forty-something year-old in the novel), through his teenage years, through a Mormon mission and into marriage, in novels all named after other songs by the Smith’s.  “Girlfriend in a Coma,” “Shoplifters of the World Unite,” “Panic,” “This Charming Man,”  “There is a Light that Never Goes Out.”  I could go on and on.

What else is The Death of a Disco Dancer about?

The main thing I wanted to explore in this novel was a Mormon kid who believes (or thinks he believes) what he has been taught and how he reconciles that belief (or suspicion of belief) with the challenges of becoming a somewhat normal, red-blooded, American teenage boy, without the didacticism and fairytale endings that seem to have been so prevalent in LDS fiction.  That idea — that the life experience of a suburban, non-Wasatch-front, non-dystopian, LDS pre-teen boy in a loving, believing, functional family could be worthy of “literature” – was really what I wanted to explore.

Also, although the novel is mostly about an 11-year old boy, Todd Whitman, I think it is, in large part, about the quiet, dedicated lives of mothers and grandmothers — the kinds of mothers and grandmothers that do the yeoman’s work of family building, who never seem to get the glory, but without whom everything would collapse.  Wallace Stegner, maybe my favorite author of all time, in his book, The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail, wrote about the Mormon pioneers that, “Their women were incredible.”   I think he was basically saying, “Yeah, the story of the Mormon migration is an amazing story, but it wasn’t all just Brigham Young and brawn, they would have never made it, this religion would have never made it, without the incredible strength and determination of their women.”  And, I think that two of the main characters of the book, Grandma Carter and Linda Whitman, the narrator’s grandmother and mother, respectively, are both pretty simple and pretty normal, but also pretty incredible.  Henry David Thoreau wrote that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”  To paraphrase (and counter, to a certain extent) Thoreau, I think that it could be said that “the mass of mothers and grandmothers lead lives of quiet dedication.”  That’s certainly the case with Grandma Carter and Linda Whitman.

Another theme that runs throughout the book is that spiritual growth and understanding, more often than not, come not in sudden electric bursts of light and understanding, but, as we plod through the various climates of life (sometimes its cloudy, sometimes there are deadly storms, sometimes it’s sunny and picture perfect, but much of the time it’s partly cloudy with a chance of rain).   So, I think that life’s most meaningful growth and understanding comes subtly and with nuance, over extended periods of time.  In other words, life is marathon, not a sprint, especially when it comes to an understanding of spiritual and familial things and how those two ultimately tie together.  I have always loved Aesop’s fable about the tortoise and the hare — “slow and steady wins the race” — and I think that this is what the narrator, Todd Whitman, ultimately learns and is something that his Grandma Carter and his mother learned themselves too.

Why did you choose to set the novel in the summer of 1981?

The bulk of the novel occurs in 1981 but it is really set in the present day, as the narrator, Todd Whitman, now a forty-something year-old father, returns home to his boyhood home in Arizona with his other grown siblings to remove his dying mother from hospice and take her home to die in her own home, in her own bed.  As Todd keeps watch over his dying mother, he reflects back on the pivotal Summer of 1981 — the summer before the culture shock of junior high school (school dances and showers in after gym class), the summer before becoming a Deacon and a boy scout, the summer his live-in grandmother fully succumbed to Alzheimer’s, the summer he lost his grandfather and the summer he first started noticing girls (and one in particular).  So, because I knew that the narrator had to be both in his forties in the present day and an eleven years-old, the early ‘80s had to be part of the novel.  And, it just so happens that I randomly chose 1981, but given the number of pop culture and other references throughout the novel, I knew that for it to be authentic, I had to choose a year.  And, 1981 — the peak and really the beginning of the end of the disco era, seemed like the perfect time for a novel that deals with “death” on different levels.

Also, for whatever reason, even though I’m not a fan of disco at all, early on in the process, I thought it would be fun, given the fact that the Bee Gees, John Travolta and a Saturday Night Fever album cover would all be referenced throughout the novel, to name the chapters after actual then-contemporary (i.e., pre-1982) disco songs.  So, for practical reasons, I needed to “pick a date” if you will.  It was fun to research the disco songs of the era and then use them as chapter titles.  With one exception (the chapter entitled “The Death of a Disco Dancer”), each of the chapters are, in fact, named for a real disco song.  And, that explains why instead of a table of contents, there is a “playlist.”

What led to you writing the novel? What was the process like for you?

When I was at BYU, as an American Studies major, I took a “Literature of the American West” survey course taught by Richard Cracroft that included some Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Wallace Stegner and something called “Mormon literature.”  Although I had been a  Mormon all my life, I had never heard of any “Mormon literature.”  The class opened a whole new world to me.  Before that class, it had never crossed my mind that my life experience — growing  up in the suburban West as a Mormon — might be worth writing about.  And from then on, I always knew that someday I would write something about that experience.

The process really started with experimenting with some short story writing, parts of which ultimately became a part of this novel and then it really went forward only in fits and starts.  I can’t write sporadically, and I can’t write with a detailed outline.  I have to have large, successive blocks of time to really wrestle with my ideas before I can write with any coherence or flow.  About a year ago I was completely burned out of my job as the general counsel of a large international company, so I quit and took a self-imposed sabbatical for about nine months and did some things I’ve always wanted to do, including taking the sporadically written beginnings of the novel and building upon it until it ultimately became The Death of a Disco Dancer.

How did you get a blurb from Richard Cracroft? What do you think he means when he states that your novel “takes Mormon literary fiction another big step forward”?

As I mentioned, I took a survey course from Professor Cracroft early in my BYU career and was fortunate enough to have chosen a major that I truly loved –American Studies.  The beauty with that major was that it was  a “cafeteria-style” major.   I was free to choose classes from the Humanities, History, English, Art and Political Science disciplines and I found myself gravitating to the English and American History courses, in particular.  And, in large measure, I then chose classes based on who was teaching.  I took several classes from Frank Fox, Neil York, Arthur Bassett and Professor Cracroft and enjoyed all of them and, at the time, Professor Cracroft also happened to be the faculty advisor for the American Studies major. Over the years, I’ve asked him to read things and he has always been such a gracious, generous man and such an advocate for Mormon literature that I thought I would see if he would be interested in reviewing the manuscript of the novel, which he did.  So, in one way or another, I don’t think the book would exist without him.  If I hadn’t have taken that class all those years ago, it probably wouldn’t exist.  And, if he hadn’t reviewed it and given me the confidence and encouragement to move forward with it, it probably would have never been finished.

As far as the “big step forward,” I’m not exactly sure what he meant by that, you would have to ask him, but I’m guessing it’s what I was alluding to before.  I’m no expert in Mormon literature or literary criticism at all, but what I see from the sidelines is a tendency in contemporary LDS fiction toward either the science fiction and dystopian genres, or a tendency toward the historical fiction, romance and chick lit genres.  And, there’s nothing wrong with that.  What I think is missing, to a large degree, however, is a realistic, contemporary treatment of the LDS experience from a believer’s point of view.  At times, LDS fiction has seemed so didactic, formulaic and sugar-coated as to be unrealistic, or so determined to be “realistic” that it tended to completely over-compensate and be antagonistic toward mainstream Mormon culture and/or the Church.  I really wanted to write something about a normal LDS boy and his experience in a realistic, relatively normal, believing LDS family and explore whether that kind of a story is compelling enough to be considered literature.  That “experiment,” if you will, led to The Death of a Disco Dancer.  I think Professor Cracroft sees that uniqueness in this novel — that the mainstream LDS experience in and of itself is worthy of literary treatment.  So, I’m guessing that’s what he means by the “big step.”

The major irony in all this is that I don’t think it’s a story that the traditional LDS publishers have the guts to publish or sell.  And, in my mind, that’s symptomatic of a larger obstacle in the future development of a truly “Mormon literature.”  The most frustrating comment I received was from another publisher that publishes almost exclusively LDS titles and LDS based fiction.  This particular publisher told me that the content was “inappropriate for our readership.”  Obviously, everyone  is entitled to his or her opinion, but I think sometimes there is a certain hypocrisy in popular Mormon culture.  Does anyone really think, for example, that if a realistic movie about the Book of Mormon were ever made that it could not be R-rated?  Figures like J. Golden Kimball (and his beloved use of colorful language), Orrin Porter Rockwell (and his mythic status as Mormon avenger) and professional football players too numerous to name (who earn their fame by, arguably, breaking the Sabbath) are revered figures in Mormon culture, but if an author (speaking through a teenage narrator with a real teenage voice) makes a reference to testicles, or, heaven forbid, uses the word “balls” or “nuts,” it’s considered “too edgy” or “inappropriate.”  That’s been frustrating, but I also think it’s pretty funny.  So, maybe the “big step forward” is that I’ve managed to write a novel that is faith promoting, maybe even testimony building, maybe even “virtuous, lovely or of good report” but also manages to use a few tried and true (and maybe even some new) slang terms for testicles and other bodily functions to get there.

What other works have you written?

The Death of a Disco Dancer is my first novel.  I’ve had a couple of stories published:  “Rock, Squeak, Wheeze” in Sunstone and “Candle” in Irreantum.

What works (of any form or genre) are really connecting with you in the world of Mormon art and beyond right now?

About a year ago, my sister introduced me to the music of a collective group of LDS musicians that recorded an album and performs as “The Lower Lights.”  They perform hymns in what they call a “revival” style.  The music is very earthy, organic, folksy and almost bluesy.  The music is fantastic and they play with fervor and passion.  Imagine standing, clapping and stomping your feet to… a hymn.  It’s unusual but it works so well.  They’ve released one album together, which is fantastic.  Theirs is the type of LDS art that I’m most interested in — that which meets the definition of the 13^th Article of Faith but interprets life through a totally unique lens within the LDS experience.  See www.thelowerlights.com.

Another artist that I’m really high on right now is Kent Christensen, an LDS artist that splits his time between New York and Sundance and regularly exhibits in London and Salt Lake City.  For the last few years, he has been painting well known images of candy, cakes and other treats that he likens to “Mormon heroin.”  At first glance, his art looks like “pop art” and I guess it is, to a certain extent, but his work while both funny and playful also always has a deeper meaning and is quite thought-provoking.  See www.kentchristensen.com

What’s next for you on the creative front?

I’m about one-third of the way finished with my second novel, a legal thriller that draws on my fifteen years in the trenches as a corporate transactional lawyer in some of America’s biggest corporate law firms and companies.

Bio:

David Clark has been a corporate attorney, specializing in mergers and acquisitions for over fifteen years. He has had stories published in Sunstone and Irreantum and has been an award winner and finalist in the Brookie and D.K. Brown Memorial Fiction Contest. David has a B.A. in American Studies from Brigham Young University. While at BYU, he served as Editor of the now defunct American Studies Forum. David also has a J.D. from George Washington University, where he served as Articles Editor of the George Washington Journal of International Law & Economics. After graduating from GW, he lived in New York City and then San Diego before returning to his hometown, Mesa, Arizona, where he lives with his wife Robin Cash Clark and their four children.  David has worked at some of the nation’s most prominent law firms and was formerly the general counsel of a major international media company. The Death of a Disco Dancer is his first novel.

Thanks, David!

But I’m getting ahead of myself—I’ll save my review of Karen’s work for a day in the not-so-distant future. Today it’s time for a little Q & A with Karen, Pushcart-nominated poet, journal editor extraordinaire, and virtual friend. She has been the featured poet in The New Formalist and Unfettered Verse: A Journal of Poetry, has made frequent appearances at Wilderness Interface Zone, and has two collections of poetry that occasion this interview: Dove on a Church Bench, which was released in April by Punkin Books, and Lavender Song, which will be released later this month by Fortunate Childe Press.

What follows is the result of a back-and-forth Karen and I shared via email over the past month or so. I want to thank her especially for humoring my string of follow-up questions!

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First of all, why did you choose to write poetry?

Fifteen years ago I was trying to think of a unique gift for my brother’s birthday. I decided to write a poem about our childhood experiences on the family boat, and described a trip to Catalina. He seemed quite amused with the sentiment, and kept it in his son’s room for several years. After that I began writing a few poems here and there—frankly, I had no idea what I was doing. It wasn’t until I became seriously interested in poetry, five years ago, that I discovered how inconsistent my meter was and the overwhelming fact that all my poems up to that point were, well, awful.

Had you written poetry before this?

No. I didn’t read it either.

What prompted you to deepen your interest in poetry and how did you pursue this interest? In other words, how did you begin to develop your craft?

My husband read a poem of mine for a church event and it was well-received. Up until that point I had about ten poems under my belt. So I placed a long love poem, complete with archaic language, disastrous meter and poor rhymes on a poetry board (the nastiest one around, I’m told), and anxiously waited for my critique. They took my 20 verse poem apart line-by-line, using terms that I couldn’t even understand. I almost had a heart attack. After about six months of brooding, I decided to study poetry seriously—for me that meant jumping back to the poetry boards and letting them critique more of my work. It’s a painful process, but I have learned quite a bit in four years. I spend almost forty hours a week involved in poetry-related projects, aside from my full-time job in the “real world.”

When did you begin calling yourself a poet?

After two years of writing, I finally got up the courage to send out some poetry for consideration. I mailed poems out to five journals—it was about a month’s wait and all the notices came back to me in the same week. Three-out-of-five magazines accepted my work. I was so excited—I think at that point I believed I had potential, but didn’t actually call myself a poet until I had my first chapbook published a year later.

What gave you the courage to start submitting poems?

I had a friend who started submitting her poems to magazines, and she encouraged me to do the same. I followed her lead. We have a similar style, so many of the journals that accepted her poetry were open to publishing my work.

Who/what are your major poetic influences?

I still read some traditional poetry—including Poe and Tennyson. But I try to read as much contemporary poetry as I have time for. Some of my favorites are Jane Kenyon, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Dana Gioia, Denise Levertov, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Kimberly Johnson, and William Carlos Williams. My house is filled with poetry books; I have a big problem parting with them.

Of these poets, who has had the greatest, most lasting impact on your writing? Also, what draws you to a poet’s work? For instance, I know you recently discovered Kim Johnson (who is one of my lasting poet crushes). What was it that first struck you about Kim’s poetry?

I was completely captivated by Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” when I first read it and I still love to use that rhyme scheme (ABBA) whenever I can, so that made an impact. Jane Kenyon is another that I enjoy reading; her work is heartfelt and honest. Kim Johnson: I was impressed by that fact that her poetry is quite sophisticated and yet spiritually inclined. One of my favorites is “Ode on my Belly Button.” I think seeing Kim’s poetry become so universally accepted has been a great inspiration to me. [As for greatest poetic influences,] I don’t think I can point to anyone in particular, but perhaps each one of these poets has influenced me in some way.

It seems to me you’re a fairly prolific writer, with poems published all over and a number of chapbooks and collections to your name. Will you walk me through your writing process—from a poem’s conception to its publication?

Often the first line comes into my head from nowhere and I build on it. Those poems are effortless and need very little editing when they are finished. I consider them a gift. But that is not the norm for me, unfortunately. Most of the time I have to shut myself into a room and start reading or writing, hoping I can come up with a few ideas. I have always had problems with concentration and I need complete solitude and silence when I write. That limits me to evenings and weekends. Sometimes little interactions with people during the day that make an impact on me turn into wonderful poems. My family’s quirks make great subjects for light verse—the cats included.

After I write a poem I post it on an online workshop or a poetry site and let them critique it. I’m famous for missing little things, so I appreciate comments and observations from other poets. When I feel the poem is right, then it’s submitted to a journal. After I have 25 or more published poems I will send them to be considered for a small chapbook. If I have 60 or more, I will make a larger manuscript and mail it off and hope someone will accept it for a book.

You mention your need for solitude—which is something to which I think many writers can relate—yet, so many of your poems seem to be about connecting with others. How does your need for solitude relate to and even inform your drive to connect, to build relationships?

I think I am a rather complex person. I come from a family that is uncomfortable with “feelings” and I tend to be emotionally reserved (maybe that’s why I married a Brit), yet many of my poems are about relationships and the complexities that evolve from them. I’m the same with nature: I write about lovely scenes, yet I cringe at the thought of walking down a dusty path for the sake of being outdoors. I have developed a healthy balance with solitude. Now that my children are gone and the house is quiet, my husband and I have our little hobbies to keep us content. I have plenty of writing time these days.

You also mention that you’re a member of an online writing group. How have your interactions with this group shaped your approach to writing and revision? And because I’m curious: how do you judge a poem’s level of completion?

Yes, I believe poetry boards can be very helpful, but one needs the right temperament and personality to hang in there and not be discouraged by aggressive critiques. The friends I know that have grown the most over the years have stayed actively involved with some type of workshop. Some of the best critiques are given by poets that don’t write in styles that I appreciate. It’s hit-and-miss as far as applying what has been said. At some point I have to draw the line, stop revising, and learn when the poem is going the wrong direction. Putting it aside for a few weeks helps.

What do you consider your major responsibility as a poet?

I have personal guidelines that I follow regarding content. For the most part, I tend to write mainstream poetry. I was converted into the LDS church 17 years ago. Prior to that, I had been raised a Seventh Day Adventist, then joined the Baptist church, and later the Unitarian Church. My favorite types of poems to write are formal verse in a lyrical style. However, I try to keep up with my free verse, and although I like considering myself a formalist poet, the truth is, I’m quite versatile.

If you don’t mind sharing: what are some of the guidelines you’ve set for yourself regarding content?

I don’t use swear words and try to stay away from creating images that are not in compliance with our church standards.

As you write, do you feel some degree of obligation to poetic forms? To language? To an audience?

I’m torn between formal and free verse. I learned form first, which may have been the harder path, but now my free verse has a lyrical element that I appreciate. I started the magazine [Victorian Violet Press] to give formal work a place to land; I want to further good formal poetry. I hope my audience likes what I like, so I don’t incorporate work that is too far outside my own personal taste. I try not to lose my own “voice” when I write, regardless of it being a tender poem or a satirical poem.

Speaking of your desire to “further formal poetry,” you have a collection of formal verse coming out this month titled Lavender Song. Tell me a little about this collection—for instance, how you feel about it, how it came into being, where you feel it fits within your body of work and within the field of contemporary American poetry.

I’m still finding my way with formal verse, trying to establish my voice. I swing between “everyday talk” and a lyrical voice, depending on my mood and where I want to submit the work. Lavender Song is a set of 45 poems, and half of them have come out of Dove on a Church Bench, which is a mixture of free verse and formal poems. Fortunate Childe Publications, a small publisher known for creating beautiful books, will be publishing it later this month. I think this is my best formalist work to date. So I am very happy having it all put together in one collection.

What do you consider your major responsibility as the editor of a poetry journal?

When I first started the magazine, my goal was to blend free verse poetry with formal poetry with the hopes of creating a wider readership. I formed two sections, one for each. As the magazine evolved and I discovered the commonalities in the poetry I chose to publish, as well as the diverse set of people that I accepted it from, I decided it would be nice to seek out some mainstream LDS writers to include. We are told that music reaches everyone through the Spirit, and I believe that all art has the ability to transcend across differences. The magazine’s goal is to publish any artist (vocalist, painter, photographer, musician) who has a spiritual element to their work.

What kind of readership did you envision for Victorian Violet? How has that vision evolved? You point to the diverse group of people from whom you accepted poems—has this diversity informed your vision for the journal and your relationship to poetry in general?

Getting to know some of the poets on a casual basis who contribute to the magazine has helped me become aware of their various backgrounds and religions. It is interesting to me that I choose poems that reflect hope. Some of the writers are atheists, Jewish, Catholic, LDS—whatever they are, they seem to appreciate life and their poetry has a common element that I feel is uplifting in some way. My vision for the journal is to help writers, vocalists, photographers and musicians in their efforts to further their craft, while creating a wider readership for the magazine.

How (if at all) does your connection to Mormonism inform your reasons for writing poetry? And how (if at all) does this connection inform what you write about and the language and imagery with which you write about it?

A large portion of my work includes images of nature, trees, flowers, birds. Ironically, I am not a nature person. I was raised in Orange County, California. We drove everywhere, and my idea of fun was a day at the shopping center. I can’t tell an oak from a walnut tree. My husband’s family lives in England and after years of traveling over there, and being forced to walk through the countryside at a snail’s pace, I have actually started to enjoy walking. Many of my nature poems include scenes from the British countryside. I don’t think my religion influences my reasons for writing, but I do justify all my hours at the computer by telling myself I am developing my talent.

Could you elaborate on how your use of natural imagery is informed by your connection to Mormonism?

There definitely is a spiritual aspect to my poetry, and I think it comes, in part, from an appreciation for the beauty in the world around me. When I joined the LDS church I began to explore the concept of all things being created spiritually before they were formed physically. There is a familiar aspect to nature that I recognize and connect with in some innate way, even though I don’t have much knowledge of it. When I write formal poetry I become more descriptive and detailed about that imagery. Writing about beauty becomes an affirmation to me of the existence of a Heavenly Father, one who has given us this world for our enjoyment, with its neverending variety of colors and textures—a world that has often been a catalyst of inspiration for artists throughout the ages.

In the title poem of your latest collection, Dove on a Church Bench, you focus on what I read as a very “familiar” Mormon ritual—the passing and receiving of the sacrament—and you mention another—the formal blessing of little children. Since you’ve in part re-created the “sacramental hour” in your poem and placed that poem as the centerpiece of your collection, do you think these rituals, which are intended to bind us to God and to our kin, relate to the making and the sharing of poetry? If so, how?

I sometimes let my religion spill into my verse, but when I do, I prefer to use metaphors and symbols as backdrop for a story or to enhance the mood—it’s never intended to be “in-your-face didactic poetry.” I enjoy the architecture of cathedrals and stained glass scenes above the pulpit. In “La Sierra 1946 [1942]” I found myself dwelling on the fact that my mother was praying in the little chapel every day, and there she developed the spiritual strength she needed as a young woman. When I wrote “Dove on a Church Bench” I focused on the differences between outsiders and members—and how an unkempt child was perhaps the real dove in Heavenly Father’s eyes. I like rituals; they are comforting and remind us of the past without turning a poem into something too sentimental.

Do you see a connection between poetry and ritual, especially in formal verse where the language is more ritualized than in, say, free verse?

I have always had difficulty with following directions, and I hate being told what to do, so it is really odd that I would gravitate toward writing in form—with all its many rules and restrictions. As far as rituals go, well, I’m strange. I find I don’t do my chores or anything the same way, or on a regular basis. (Then again, I like all the people and things around me to remain constant.) I also enjoy poems that have repeating lines. I find comfort in detailed work, putting together intricate poems and reading them. I worked for about 18 months to try and write free verse. I had some good success with most of it, but I didn’t feel that my work stood out much in the big scheme of things. I made a conscious decision about 9 months ago to get back into writing formal verse, and I am quite content to be on that path.

I’m going to give the long version of the answer first, which begins with Jorge Luis Borges. I love his short stories, and one of my favorites is “The Garden of Forking Paths.” In that story, the characters discuss the existence of a novel which is also a labyrinth; a novel which follows multiple “paths” and alternate realities at once. With this concept, Borges is considered the inventor of the hypertext novel, the concept behind such later innovations as “choose your own adventure.” Reading “The Garden of Forking Paths,” and another postmodern classic, Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler, as an undergrad, started me thinking about postmodern story structure and time and ultimately led to The Year of the Boar. My story is not nearly as complex or tradition-bending as Borges or Calvino, but that’s where it has its origins. The timeline of The Year of the Boar is based on the Chinese Zodiac, something I’ve been fascinated with since I was a child reading the placemats at my grandparents’ favorite Chinese restaurant. The concept of the years of the zodiac, and that restaurant, and my grandparents, actually, show up in the first chapter of the book. The rest of the book is structured by year – scenes take place first in 1957, then 1969, 1981, 2005 – all the year of the rooster. Part two of the book goes back in time to 1946 and begins a series of stories in the year of the dog. Part three begins with another backtrack in time, resolving storylines in the titular year of the boar.

The stories are (for the most part) actual stories that happened to myself, my family members, and people I met as a missionary in Japan. There are some fictionalized elements to build backstory, but the four main characters are all (real) women who are finding out about the LDS church and going through their conversion process, all in different times, countries and circumstances, but all parallel and intertwined.

I wrote this book while I was living in Taiwan. I had a busy job teaching and writing research during the day, and at night I would come home to a tiny rented apartment where I lived alone. I’m not particularly fond of living alone, but it was a catalyst in this case to get me to finally write down the stories I’d been planning since returning from my mission four years prior. I wanted historical details to be correct, so I did a lot of careful research on anything that took place in the past. I have a stack of letters from my paternal grandmother to the missionary who baptized her (which he sent to my family after tracking us down years later) and I relied on those to build her character since she died long before I was born. I also read a great deal of Wikipedia, which may seem like shoddy research but is actually your best friend when you live in Taiwan and your Chinese is painfully inadequate. After completing my first draft, I had several readers help me with revisions, including my mother (who is the subject of a great deal of the book and, surprisingly, didn’t take much offense at my re-creations of her personal history) and a couple friends I have who are currently studying at Nanjing University and whose knowledge of Chinese history and customs is much deeper than mine.

That was the long version of the answer. The short version is: Chinese food.

It’s rather mainstream in terms of the types of stories Mormons are used to seeing from “Mormon authors.” It’s, at first examination, a missionary story, but I like to think of it actually as a conversion story. Its essence is the process of conversion and what that means in the context of history, family, and everyday life. I do hope that The Year of the Boar brings some fresh offerings to the missionary story genre, and among those would be the perspective of sister missionaries, the experience of women in the modern world, and also a realization of the realities of the gospel in Asia. This novel spends a great deal of time in China, a land that the average church member situates behind a cold and Godless bamboo curtain. But there are Chinese Mormons (a lot of them, actually) and the Gospel is going forward in China every way it can. I wanted to share that with the American LDS population.

This is not the first time you have written and self-published a novel. How was this experience compared to the last time?

Hopefully it produced a better book! My previous book, The Lotus Eaters, (still available here at cafepress) isn’t bad for something I wrote during NaNoWriMo during the last month of my undergrad and never really revised. But that’s about where its merits run out. While that was a good experience, and an important milestone for me in reflecting and capping off my years as an LDS student at a non-LDS state university, it taught me more about the writing process than it taught anyone else about any sort of the profound subtleties I thought I was writing about. There is a reason that book will always remain a print-on-demand self-published piece, but it was a good first step towards the kind of writing I want to be producing someday.

Interestingly enough, these two books are both largely autobiographical, which I thought was what added to their believability and artistic success. But with both books, the response I’ve gotten from readers has been that their favorite parts are the ones that are the most fictional. I’m not quite sure if that means anything more than perhaps the fact that my real life isn’t as interesting as I like to think it is, but one impact it has had is that it’s made me more confident in my ability to write good fiction. My current project, which may be a lot longer in coming than these two were because it’s a graphic novel and requiring a lot more time, is a turn-of-the-century Mormon-twinged story set in San Francisco’s Chinatown called Cordelia’s Seven Female Chinese Cousins. It contains elements of an aesthetic that I’ve decided really needs to exist: Chinese steampunk. It’s a lot “further out” than anything I’ve written before, but maybe this is a good thing.

It’s really all the same thing. I’m going to go even farther than that and say that a huge segment of our life that we always thought was mechanics and skills is actually, in fact, art, and that we need to be using artistic conventions much more than we currently do. More than a writer, illustrator or graphic designer, I consider myself a teacher. But teaching is art. I’m a Ph.D. student in education and a lot of my research there is convincing me more and more that teaching and learning are arts and not sciences that we need to be evaluating as such. It’s still a really radical thing in the education world today to talk about evaluating education not as if it were a social science but as if it were an art. I am a bit of a disciple of Elliot Eisner, an educational evaluator who suggests that we need to address education the same way we address art: by writing criticism. This resonates with me because I came out of art school: I learned to be a designer by sitting in a room with my peers and my professor with our work up on the wall and we created an environment of creative criticism that at first chafed and later exalted. The atmosphere of criticism creates vibrant, interactive artists (educators/writers) who can see the holistic, shifting niche their work needs to fill and then craft ever-improving works to fill it.

Today, particularly, as the commons of ideas has shifted from a publication infrastructure to the flexible medium of online communication, our education establishment and also our literary world have the capacity to become fields driven by connoisseurs and participatory artists and the art we produce is ever improved as it is “purified by the best critics.” Maybe the rather public nature of graphic design; one of the least sacred fields of art where your creations are constantly vulnerable to market pressures, unreasonable clients and public demand, has given me this view of the nature of art and creation. But really, it works out better this way and my works are 800 times better once I’ve posted them and run through the trial of fire that is internet commentary than when I’ve kept them tucked and polished in my safe-deposit box.

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Theric: Let’s start with the history of WWJD? Where did it come from? How did you find it? How did the New Play Project production do?

Davey: WWJD was written by Anna Lewis as her BYU Creative Writing Master’s Thesis. The idea started as a poem (which will be published later this year in Dialogue), and developed into a play through the BYU Writers-Dramaturgs-Actors workshop, led by Eric Samuelsen and Wade Hollingshaus. My wife, Bianca, was a dramaturg and actress in the workshop at the time, and got to see the script as it developed, offer feedback, and participate in the staged reading when it was finished. She loved the play, and had been wanting to produce it ever since; so, when we started planning New Play Project’s first season with Bianca as Artistic Director, WWJD was one of the first titles that came up. I finally read the script and completely adored it. We decided to do it.

The show ran the last weekend in March and one of the first weekends of April at the Provo Theatre (we skipped a weekend for General Conference–who in Provo wants to see a play about Jesus during General Conference?). Tony Gunn did a wonderful job directing, we had a fantastic cast, and audiences loved it. We were (I think understandably) a little nervous about doing a show in Provo where Jesus skateboards, goes miniature golfing, and plays Halo, and it was tricky to market–the script might seem a bit edgy for the Deseret Book crowd, but it’s also pretty G-rated and really quite reverent. As is usually the case with New Play Project, our most effective advertising was done through word-of-mouth–our first weekend, we had audiences of twenty or thirty people, but by closing night we were playing to a sold-out crowd, including a few people who had come back for a second time and brought friends. Almost everyone who talked to us after the show told us they loved it. One guy told Bianca as he was buying tickets, “I just couldn’t stop thinking about it, I had to come see it again.” It was really an incredibly rewarding experience–the sort of thing you really look forward to in theater and in the arts generally. We had a good time putting it together, and it was a project I think we were all excited to share with our audiences. And we were even able to pay rent on the theater.

Theric: So I hear there’s a new production of WWJD happening in Salt Lake? Tell us about that.

Davey: Actually, I don’t think there is. We’re having a round of auditions for the film in Salt Lake, so that might be where you got that idea–maybe we should look at that and make sure it’s more clear. (Unless there is a new production in SLC, and I just don’t know about it, which would be awesome!)

Theric: In that case, let’s move right into the real point of this interview. Filming WWJD. Whose idea was this?

Davey: Last summer I was starting to really get into low-budget and DIY filmmaking–reading a lot of blogs, watching no-budget movies, and seeing how beautiful and professional a movie can look for just a few thousand dollars. With DSLRs and other recent developments in prosumer HD and with online distribution I think we’re seeing a shift in the economics of filmmaking that’s unlike anything in film history–it’s a bit like the paradigm shifts of Italian neorealism or the French New Wave, but on a much broader scale. So right around the time I was thinking about directing a feature in the not-too-distant future, I read WWJD. The more I read the script, the more I loved it–and the more I started to see it as a film. I thought it was a shame that our stage production would probably only be seen by a few hundred people at the most, and I started getting really excited about the idea of shooting it. I e-mailed Anna Lewis, and she was thrilled about the idea. I got started adapting it and started talking to some potential crew members, and things grew from there.

Theric: I can get why the script inspired you. I somehow came across it online (all BYU masters theses being online these days) and started reading it and couldn’t stop even though I had more important things to do. I look forward to seeing the poem and, I hope, seeing the film. But even a cheap film is expensive. Even with (relatively) inexpensive cameras and options for digital distribution, you still require hours and hours of people’s lives to make it happen. What kind of range (both in terms of hours and dollars) do you anticipate this project taking?

Davey: We’ll be shooting the first two weeks of August, with typical 12-hour shooting days. Our projected budget is around $10,000, about half of which we hope to raise through Kickstarter. Almost all of our cast and crew will be working for free, with the possibility of deferred pay if the film makes a profit or if we’re able to raise additional funds. I think we’ve been able to assemble such a strong crew primarily by virtue of the script–people are excited about the project, and it’s attracted a very talented group (and hopefully will continue to do so, with auditions for most major roles taking place this Saturday and next). We’re making the movie for (compared to most movies) virtually nothing, but we’ll be using the same kind of camera that was used to shoot movies like Monte Hellman’s Road to Nowhere, Lena Dunham’s SXSW-winning Tiny Furniture, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, Rubber, some of Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan and Robert Rodriguez’s Machete, and House’s sixth season finale. For an example of micro-budget filmmaking, check out this featurette on Gareth Edwards’ terrific Monsters, which came out last year, was shot for $15,000, and features big scary monsters breaking things on location in Central America. It’s an exciting time to be making independent films, and I hope WWJD will show how Christian and Mormon filmmakers can take advantage of new technology to tell great stories that traditionally probably wouldn’t get funded. After we wrap production in August, we’ll be working on editing the film and sending it out to festivals around the country.

Theric: The reason I’m interviewing you about this project now (as opposed to next month or last week) is because of your Kickstarter campaign. So give us your pitch.

Davey: As mentioned, we’ve got a great crew, and this really is a phenomenal script–incredibly smart, funny, and entertaining. I really think we’re going to be able to put together a great movie. As you mentioned, the play is available to read online for anyone interested, and I think it speaks for itself. As far as Kickstarter goes, for those who don’t know how it works, it’s an all-or-nothing fundraising platform–which means that if we reach our goal of $5,000 in 60 days, we get to keep all the money that’s been pledged. But, if we don’t make the goal, we don’t get anything, and no one will be charged for any donations they’ve pledged–which means, as a donor, you’ve got nothing to lose. Every dollar counts, and we have rewards available at different donation levels–including seeing your name in the end credits of the film (along with your very own IMDb page!), season tickets to New Play Project (if you’re in the area), and copies of the movie itself (on DVD, Blu-Ray, or digital download–so if you want to see the film, donate to our Kickstarter and consider that your pre-order). We’re putting everything we can into the film, but we need everyone’s help in order to get it made. It’s just the sort of intelligent, thoughtful, well-crafted and engaging story that AMV readers (and fans of the “radical middle” everywhere) will love.

Theric: Well, you certainly know how to say what we want to hear. Folks, here’s where you get in on the action.

If you haven’t heard about Duck Beach yet, you should hear about it now. I would like to have you watch a video first, but we’ve been having trouble with embedding them of late. If you want to watch it first, you still can, but how about let’s  interview one of the minds behind this project first — how does that sound?

Theric: First, until watching the video on your Kickstarter page, I had never heard of Duck Beach. What’s wrong with me? Clearly this is the Biggest Thing in Mormondom. “Thousands of single Mormons”? Was this not happening a few years ago? Has it until recently just been a North Carolina thing? Is this an official YSA activity or is this just a thing that continues through its own momentum?

Stephen: You know, I’m not completely sure how Duck Beach got started. That’s something we’ve asked every person we’ve interviewed so far. There are as many creation myths as there are Duck Beach attendees. The basic story, is that some people from Washington DC wanted a surf getaway, and the outer banks of North Carolina offered the best choice. It’s drivable from DC. They started to invite more and more people, and it’s organically evolved from there. Slowly people from around the country heard about it, and it’s grown to what it is now. “Thousands” may be a slight exaggeration, but the number definitely hovers around 1,000 people. We’ve heard it started in the 80s, 90s, or early 2000s. Who knows? Seriously, if anyone does know, we’d love to interview them.

Theric: If I understand the history of the project correctly, your filmmaking partner heard about Duck Beach independently of you and decided to make the documentary before approaching you — the Mormon — with the project. Is that right? Take us through the genesis of the project and tell us about your fellow filmmakers.

Stephen: Hadleigh Arnst and I have been working together for several years. We started a production company together, and have done multiple projects. He’s known about Duck Beach through other Mormon Friends, and pitched the idea to me at the beginning of this year. I loved it, and we’ve scrambled to do a bunch of interviews and select four different main subjects. We brought in Laura Naylor, a Mormon who has moved on to other things, to keep the thing balanced.

Theric: And now you’ve taken the project to Kickstarter for funding. What have you done already and what will you do with the $15,000 you’re asking for?

Stephen: We’ve travelled to Utah a couple times to film possible subjects, and for research reasons. Also, we’ve travelled to DC to get back ground on Stacey and on the Duck Beach phenomenon. But for the actual Duck Beach experience, we want to high quality sound and camera people. Mormons and not Mormons. Shooting something like this, you only get one take. And you want to be sure the technical stuff doesn’t get in the way of telling a great story. Then we’ll get a jump on editing and other boring post-production tasks.

Theric: What will Duck Beach bring that’s new to both in-the-Church and national discussion of Mormons? How do you see yourself as part of this larger field of Works About Mormons?

Stephen: I’ve struggled with the idea of originality in all of my work. I’m not sure it’s completely possible. All we want to do is tell an interesting and honest story. Definitely on the National Scene, Mormons can be stereotyped, or even seen as a complete mystery. So, hopefully, this humanizes the Mormon Experience. Also, because the church (intentionally? accidentally?) separates “singles” and “marrieds” this will hopefully create some understanding between the two groups, if they can even be called that.

Theric: Assuming everything goes smoothly, when and how will you roll out the finished product?

Stephen: Our goal is to have an initial cut by August, in time to submit to the major festivals.

Theric: Anything I should have asked but didn’t? Tell us about that.

Stephen: I guess the first thing a lot of people ask is if this is going to be the Mormon Jersey Shore. The answer? I hope not. We are hoping to really get into our subjects’ lives, and see how they all intersect during an interesting and crazy weekend. But if we could sign on “The Situation” to make a guest appearance, I’m not sure we could turn that down.

Theric: Finally — last chance — make your final pitch. Tell people where to go and how to give and when the deadline is.

Stephen: Go here, May 22nd is our deadline; we’ve raised almost half our money. If you love the idea, then it’s a great chance to be a part of the process. Plus, you can be the first to own a digital download, or hard copy of the film. It’s a great project. It’s a fine story. And Mormons are definitely hot right now; it is a good time to tell the story on a national stage. And lastly, I want to thank our four wonderful subjects of the film. It’s not easy to open your life up to a film crew, but they are comfortable and beautiful in front of the camera. I’m thankful for their commitment.

When we left off yesterday, we were segueing from the couple-creators portion of this interview to talking with Ben Abbott about the new one-man show he has written and is starring in this weekend (with, of course, some additional insights from his wife Barbara). If you will be in the Bay Area, click on the poster to buy tickets. Hurry — the show is expected to sell out.

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Th: The reason I’m finally getting around to making this interview happen now is Ben’s show this weekend. Tell us about it.

Ben: This is my senior thesis at UC Berkeley. It’s a one-man show about gay members of the church. When Proposition 8 happened I was the only active Mormon studying at PCPA (which is in California), where the majority of my friends were gay. I felt strangely caught between two worlds, with my family and faith on one side, and my friends and work on the other. I thought, you know, do I have to reject one or the other of these to some degree to truly embrace the other? Out of those ponderings came the question, well what about gay members of the church themselves? Talk about conflict. How do they reconcile the contradiction? Or do they? I spent a few months interviewing people, and from those transcripts I pulled segments and pieced them together into a one-man show. I think it offers a wider look at the issue than most of what I’ve seen that’s out there right now. This is not a monolithic group, and there is a huge variety of reactions to finding oneself at the crossroads of gay and Mormon, and I try to present enough of them to challenge just about anyone’s assumptions, no matter which “side” they’re on.

Th: Was this project an easy sell to Cal’s theater department?

Ben: Well, I was one of a bunch of proposals, out of which they chose two.  Cal’s theater department is actually a theater and performance studies department, and if you know anything about performance studies, this project really hits a lot of its main focuses:  intersectionality, ethnography, performance of self, dialectic performance. But also I think they were intrigued by the fact that I was taking this project on as a straight, faithful Mormon. One professor said you would expect a gay Mormon to write this kind of project proposal, so it’s almost surprising coming from me. I think they were intrigued by the fact that I was coming at the issue truly curious, without my mind made up about anything or an agenda to push, just wanting to learn more and understand this quagmire a little better. Plus of course in the wake of Prop 8 in California, it’s very topical. Besides, the core issue of being in conflict between one’s sexuality and one’s religious faith is not just a Mormon issue. I got the sense from some of the faculty that they were genuinely interested in what I found.

Th: What kind of support did you require to bring the project to fruition?

Ben: It’s funny you ask that.  In tech rehearsal last night there were dozens of people working on lights, sound, costumes etc.  The lighting design teacher came up to me and said “remember a year and a half ago when you were first thinking up this project, and now look at this room full of people working away on it.”  A play, even a one-man show is not something that someone does alone.  But back to the beginning, first I had to find people to interview, and you actually helped me out quite a bit with that.  You put me in touch with a couple of your friends and they referred me to others and so on.  I went from hoping I could find enough people to interview to not even being able to interview half the people I was in touch with.  The process of turning hundreds of pages of interviews into a 55 minute one-man show involved a faculty advisor, a very helpful stage manager and a director.  Both of them are Cal undergrads who don’t know anything about the Church, but a lot about theater.  They were able to help tell me what was working and what wasn’t and my director was fantastic at crafting the movement of the show so it’s not just me standing there talking for an hour.  The great thing about this opportunity for me is that it’s a department show, so I was assigned lighting and costume designers and so forth. After months of feeling like I was working all by myself, the last couple of months have been amazing as I got to see this whole army of people mobilize to make it a reality.

Th: Tell us a bit about the people who you talked with. How do they breakdown demographically? And how did they feel about your proposal?

Ben: I thought that by narrowing it down to gay Mormons I would get a narrower view, and in fact the opposite happened. They range in age from their mid-twenties to their seventies. I interviewed four women and eight men. While many of them had a lot in common, I think I found a wider range of experiences and opinions on the subject of homosexuality and the Church than I could find anywhere. Some have left the Church way behind, some are still active and zealously so, some have come back after years of being gone. Three of the people I interviewed are in mixed-orientation marriages (meaning they’re gay, but married to a straight spouse of the opposite sex) and even among those three there’s a wide range of activity and belief in the Church. The most interesting thing about the interviews is that I genuinely liked every person I interviewed. Even though they were so vastly different from each other, and this person’s statements would likely make that person cringe and vice versa, I was just there to learn and I really did like every single person I interviewed and learned a lot from each of them. One thing they all had in common as well was that they were glad I was doing this project. Whether they loved the Church or hated it, were closeted or in a same sex marriage, each of them knew I was also interviewing people who felt the exact opposite as they do, and almost all expressed some interest or gratitude for what I was doing. To me that seems to indicate that not enough of this kind of work is being done.

Babs: It’s surprised us, actually, at how overwhelmingly positive everyone responded to this project. Everyone we told about it just loved the idea. I mean, this kind of thing just hasn’t quite been done before that we’ve seen, and as a result, people thirst for it. Frankly, it was intimidating because people have had such high hopes and expectations for the show, Ben was nervous he wouldn’t live up to them. Personally, I think he’s done the work justice.

Th: How has working on this project changed you?

Ben: These are not easy questions.  I’ve thought this before, but it’s just been magnified a hundred times that empathy and understanding are so much more important than being right and having the answers. Also, I think my testimony in the Church is so much more flexible, like a skyscraper that’s able to wobble in an earthquake, but not topple. I don’t have to know all the answers to everything or be right about everything for my testimony to be intact and strong. I’m more comfortable than I used to be with difficult questions, and being able to say, I just don’t have an answer to this or that, but that doesn’t bother me.

Babs: In many interviews the subject of personal revelation is brought up by the interviewee and each of them received answers unique to their situation, even if it was to leave the Church, or to stay with their same-sex partner. There just isn’t a cookie cutter shape for what a Mormon or any other Christian should look like or do; therefore — and I know this is such a cliche statement — we can’t judge others based on our shape and our actions. I’ve developed a stronger sense that Heavenly Father really loves and interacts with us on an individual level, and my testimony of personal revelation has been greatly strengthened.

Th: After the show closes on Saturday, what’s next for Questions of the Heart?

Ben: Well like I said, the more people I interviewed the more people I wanted to interview. This show really is only a very small sampling. What I really want to do is continue the research. I would love to find a theater company interested in producing Questions of the Heart, but I would also love to spend another year or so interviewing and learning more. I have so many questions now that I didn’t have before I started. It’s a one-act show now, but perhaps it can be developed into a full length. I’m talking in circles, but basically, what I have now is a vehicle I can continue working on, and there’s so much work to do, I’d love to find a way of researching full time and getting this issue into our dialog as a community. I would love to perform this in both Utah and the Castro district in San Francisco and see what I learn. The difficulty now is that I’m graduating and thus leaving this wonderful support system, so I’ve got to figure out either how to plug into a new one or how I can proceed just on my own. If there’s anyone out there interested in financing this kind of work, let me know.

[Theditorial note: Anyone wishing to contact the Abbotts may do so through me at theric*motleyvision*com.]

Th: This is a bit of a redundant question as you have already essentially answered it, but talk about the mountains of interview you collected (and the further mountains you were unable to collect given your brief timeframe). What are you going to do with all that extra stuff?

Ben: I only interviewed a dozen people, and the hardest part of this process was not being able to use even a fraction of the remarkable material. I feel like with just a couple follow-ups I could literally do a one-man show based on each interview. You and I were talking the other day about this and I said sort of off the cuff that I already had enough material to compile a book. I’d forgotten I was talking to someone for whom that kind of thing isn’t just idle talk.  In thinking about it since then I think that may be the most logical direction for this go. It’s just so difficult to cram enough of what I think is remarkable material from these interviews into a single performance. I don’t think I’ll abandon the play though because there’s something so amazing about getting people into a room together to experience something together. I don’t know, perhaps a book and a play aren’t mutually exclusive.

Th: What sort of buzz are you hearing in the communities you’re addressing — theater, LGBTQ, LDS? And how do you expect (slash-hope) they will respond?

Ben: Mostly people seem excited about it.  I can’t really speak for them, but from the feedback I’ve received, the LGBTQ community seems glad that I’m raising these questions, and interested in what my take is on this as an outsider; the LDS community I think is hungry for someone to really look at this issue in a way that doesn’t wreak of anti-Mormonism (I’m thinking specifically of 8: The Mormon Proposition [link to AMV review]) because that’s an immediate turn off; and the theater community is interested to learn more about something they don’t know much about and are hoping that it’s a good show.

Th: I’ve bought tickets for Thursday’s show, but for people who are squirmy or never seen a one-man show or who otherwise still need convincing, give them your best shot. (This is probably a good spot to mention the nudity thing.)

Ben: OK, so since you mentioned the partial nudity, the first thing I need to say is that it’s not me!!  I stay fully clothed the whole time thank you very much. My show runs with another one act senior thesis project called Time and Materials which is a stage adaptation of some of former Poet Laureate  Robert Hass’ poetry, and in that show there is a brief moment of a topless woman. My show is going first so that anyone who objects to brief partial nudity can politely excuse themselves at intermission.  But if you do come I would really encourage you to stay for both shows. Time and Materials is worth seeing and we don’t want there to me a mass exodus at intermission as that wouldn’t be fair to them.

Why come to the show?  When was the last time you went to a show that actually surprised you, and both affirmed and challenged you in intriguing ways?  No matter who you are, you will hear things in my show that you strongly agree with, things that you strongly disagree with, and things that you hadn’t ever considered.  The neat part of theater is that you’ll be in an audience where everyone has a different opinion, and you’ll all be experiencing and reacting to the show differently, and I think there’s a lot to learn from that. These are wonderful characters, and I was both enlightened and challenged by each of them. I also want to point out that I have no interest in doing or seeing a show where I just get talked at the whole time, or lectured, or just constantly challenged. That’s not my kind of show. I still think that on top of everything we should be able to go to the theater and be entertained, and because of that, this show is fun and moving. And hey, if all else fails, there is the partial nudity in the show after mine.

Babs: And Ben is too modest to say this but he really is a very talented actor.  Not to mention the script is great.  There’s a balance between the serious and funny, heartwarming moments.  It’s just a good and honest show.

Th: Thanks, you two. And although I haven’t seen the script or ever seen Ben perform-perform (those who’ve met actors, know what I mean), I have tremendous faith in this show. I can’t wait to see it. Is it still tradition to encourage you to break an appendage?

When Ben and Barbara moved into our ward last year as newlyweds, I knew I wanted to interview them even though they are still at the beginning of their careers and less established than other artists I’ve interviewed for Couple-Creators. I thought a) it would be nice to get a sense of how my questions get answered at the beginning of a marriage rather than a decade (or decades) in and b) it would be nice just to get to know them better.

Th: Let’s start though with Your Story. Because your existence as Mormon Couple-Creators is not only newly coupled, but, in Barbara’s case, newly Mormoned as well. So tell us how Ben & Barbara came to be.

Babs: It’s kind of a long, complicated story that involves my conversion, so ready yourself!   We met during a costume fitting for White Christmas. We were both working at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts (PCPA Theaterfest).  I was a Costume Design Intern, and Ben was a student in the acting conservatory.  It was my first show at PCPA, so I was taking full advantage of the fittings to scope out what the male actors were like.  When Ben came in I immediately noticed his height (I promise I’m not shallow, I’m just tall and notice a good tall guy…).  He seemed great: friendly, funny, intelligent, and he lived in Argentina for two years!  Cultured to boot!  Oh… he was on his mission … he’s Mormon… bummer.  Nevertheless, he left a strong impression on me.  We got to know one another more during A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He played Lysander and I designed makeup for the show — well, mostly, I designed makeup for the fairies because they were colored from head-to-toe like Hindu gods.  Ben’s makeup was standard highlights and shadows, but he needed a lot of help.

Ben: I would just like to say that you would need a lot of help with your makeup too if the help was so lovely.  Did I just call you “the help?”  You know what I mean.

Babs: Immediately after Midsummer we worked on Les Miserables –- I was the Design Assistant and Ben in the ensemble.  I asked him out to “coffee” right before dress rehearsals started.  We dated through the summer – foolishly falling hard for one another yet recognizing the entire time that it could never go anywhere.  Ben wasn’t going to compromise getting married in the temple, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to become Mormon!  So we broke up when Ben left for Berkeley.  At my request we didn’t talk for a while.  When we were dating, Ben never really talked about the church unless I brought it up, but it had piqued my interest and I asked for a Book of Mormon, but Ben forgot to give it to me.

Ben: I have nothing to say in my defense.  I’d say I’m just a terrible member missionary except that the results speak for themselves. No but really, we did actually talk about the church quite a bit, I was just trying to make sure you were the one bringing it up and asking questions, and when you did I jumped on it.

Babs: Exactly.  I don’t think I would have responded well to anything too intense.  I needed it to be my decision, separate from Ben’s influence.  But, I really respected Ben and his family and I admired the strength of their faith, so ultimately, I decided to look into Mormonism a little bit.  At first I was like, “man, this is crazy!  I’m so glad it didn’t work out!”

Ben: You never told me that was your first reaction!

Babs: It wasn’t my FIRST reaction, it just sort of confirmed the things people say about Mormons.  But then… I don’t know, I kept praying about it and coming back to wanting to learn more.  I checked out a Book of Mormon from the library and went to church with an LDS friend.  This entire time I didn’t tell Ben about it because neither of us wanted him to influence my decision (though he did finally send me that Book of Mormon)  I started meeting with the missionaries, and during our fifth lesson I made a commitment to get baptized… TWO WEEKS LATER!  It was nuts… but it was so right.  And here’s something pretty cool — a Tender Mercy, if you will — when the elders proposed the baptism date it was the exact weekend Ben was coming to visit.  It was like God was saying “look, this guy is an important part of your life and we both know it.”  That was February 20th and we were engaged in April and married June 4th.

Ben: I would just add that once you meet Barbara, you understand why, after she joined the church, we got engaged relatively quickly.  I had to lock that down.

Th: Theater is one of the more collaborative artforms and so I wonder how you’re looking forward — how do you hope your careers to track together? How do you intend to get this to work for both of you?

Ben: Well, it’s weird.  Even though we both work in Theatre, we both definitely work in our own spheres.  Especially since we’re both young and new, and just trying to get work from other people at this point.  Even when we’ve worked for the same company we haven’t really worked together.  So at this phase our goal is basically to get work in the same area at the same time. When one of us has a great opportunity, the other follows and then tries to get something going in that area for him or herself.

Babs: We’re sort of figuring it out as we go along.  I think ideally, we would have a sort of home base — either a city with lots of theaters that we’ve networked with, or a place like PCPA which has one resident theatre in the area, and from there we can do freelance work all over.  We’re both willing to travel for shorter periods of time.  We just have to be extremely flexible.  With grad schools, for example, we set out looking together for schools, but ended up deciding to go to Indiana so I can go back to school and Ben will audition for theaters in the area and work.  We have entertained the idea of starting our own theater company someday.

Th: Creating as a couple has always struck me as a particularly Mormon pastime in the sense that someday, the goal is, you will be capital-c Creators. In that sense, how do your artistic efforts reflect your faith (and vice versa)?

Babs: I really haven’t come to the point of connecting my creativity to capital-c Creativity.  I hang out in a much simpler plane of existence right now: I like making pretty things.  Of course, I am oversimplifying it.  I absolutely love designing.  I love collaborating with other designers; seeing all the elements together on stage work so well together.  They pure joy that comes from a job well done, or a good design, even if it has to come out of struggle and frustration, is worth it.  I like to imagine those elements are the same in capital-c Creation… just even better.

Ben: It seems to get harder and harder for people to find a common ground where they can even understand each other, but in a play you create a common experience.  From there you can talk.  I think that in Theatre you can build bridges that just aren’t there usually and thus people can experience things like empathy, forgiveness, understanding etc.  Ultimately, we’re creating a space where scenarios can play themselves out and the participants can expand and learn and grow in this created environment.  That sounds pretty familiar, doesn’t it?

Th: What advice have you received in regards to being an artistic couple and how do you judge the advice you receive?

Ben: The advice I’ve received the most is that we need to beware of jealousy.  Being jealous at your partner’s success is apparently a big problem with actors, who essentially spend most of our time wallowing in failure (something like 80% of professional actors are unemployed at any given moment) and are by nature insecure.  But I think in our case it is a bit different because we’re not both actors, so success means different things for each of us.  If Babs is hired as a wardrobe supervisor, I’m not going to say, man I wish I’d gotten that job.  Like I said, we both work in Theatre, but we operate in different spheres.

Babs: We’ve thought about the jealousy thing in terms of how it’ll be for us when Ben’ characters have on-stage relationships.  We’ve worked out a system of sorts, but ultimately I don’t think it’ll be an issue at all.   As for advice, I haven’t received much regarding our careers.  More just comments like “wow!  That’s cool. Good luck…” or “That’s going to be challenging, good luck.”  So just a lot of well wishers.  I don’t know a lot of people who have been in our particular situation.

Th: Looking forward — this time not as artists but as a nascent family — how do you intend to find that slippery balance between the two?

Babs: Right now we’re trying to reconcile our single-Ben and single-Babs ideas and career goals into combined, married-Ben-and-Babs career and life goals.  Also, working now is more than just a way to get the rent paid month-to-month, it’s important for us to start saving and creating a foundation for our future.  So we’re trying to look ahead at how to do that, especially with both of us in careers that aren’t high-paying.  Also, thinking about having kids is a little (I almost type “a lottle”  which is, perhaps, more accurate) intimidating… how will we afford them?  I’m the money-worrier, so I’m trying to figure out ways to make the most out of what we make.

Ben: It’s definitely an adjustment to say, ok, I can’t just move to L.A. or New York, get a job as a waiter, audition all the time, and take whatever job I can get no matter where in the world it takes me or for how long.  Trying to work stability of location and income into a career in the Theatre makes you approach things very differently.

Th: Now the reason I’m finally getting around to making this interview happen is Ben’s show next weekend. Tell us about it.

[to be continued later this week, but to buy tickets to Ben's show now, just click on the poster (which, I might add, was designed by Mormon couple-creators Dan and Denise Gasser)]