In Memoriam: Eric Samuelsen

Eric Roy Samuelsen, a towering figure in Mormon and Utah theater, passed away early this morning. Eric (April 10, 1956-September 20, 2019) was a prolific playwright, who for twenty-five years produced dramas and comedies which tackled difficult moral and social themes. His work was widely praised, winning awards and garnering strong review. A fervent Christian and active participant in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, his plays frequently challenged commonly held ideas and cultural practices in Mormon society, especially economic inequality, gender inequality, and discrimination towards sexual minorities.

Eric taught at Brigham Young University Theatre and Media Arts Department from 1992 to 2012, when he retired due to his illness with polymyositis, a degenerative muscular disease. He was a renowned teacher, and was active in the LDS and Utah cultural communities, serving as president of the Association for Mormon Letters in 2007-2009, and as a Playwright In Residence at Plan-B Theatre Company in Salt Lake City since 2012. Eric is survived by his wife, Annette, and their four children.

Eric’s plays won the Association for Mormon Letters Drama Award in 1994, 1997, and 1999. At that point Eric requested that he no longer be considered for the award, to give younger playwrights a better chance of winning. He is the only person ever to be removed from contention for that award. In 2012 the Association for Mormon Letters presented him with the Smith–Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters.

The following is a brief summary of Eric’s theatrical and literary career. It is not intended to be a summary of his life, particularly his personal and family life. Sources for this summary largely come from these interviews and articles:

Mahonri Stewart. Saints on Stage: An Anthology of Mormon Drama. Zarahemla Press, 2013.
“An Interview with Eric Samuelsen”. Mahonri Stewart, A Motely Vision, May 22, 2006.
“Eric Samuelsen”. Mahonri Stewart. Mormon Artist, February 2011. ‘
“An Interview with Eric Samuelsen”. BYU College of Fine Arts and Communication, 2014.
“Chills and Trills: Plan-B playwright Eric Samuelsen on his influences, process, and The Kreutzer Sonata”. Megan Crivello. Utah Theater Bloggers Association, 2015.

Eric was born in Provo, Utah, and his family moved to Bloomington, Indiana when he was young. His father Roy was an opera singer and his mother Mary Lou was a teacher. Eric had his stage debut at age six or seven as a street urchin in a production of Peter Grimes.

Eric has said,

When I got to high school, two teachers saved my life. One was an English teacher named Kenneth Mann who thought I had potential as a writer and put me in a creative writing workshop he taught. The other was the typing teacher—yes, high schools used to offer typing and filing as a class—who was an opera buff and knew of my father and got me involved in the school choir. So I got involved with choir, went from there to theatre, wrote a column for the school newspaper, and became editor of the school creative writing magazine. Basically, I found my niche. So when I went to college, playwriting seemed like a natural next step.

Eric went to Brigham Young University. After one year, he served a mission in Norway for the Church, in 1975-1977. Mahonri Stewart notes, “It was a providential call, since the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen would become a major influence on Samuelsen.” (Saints on Stage).

Back at BYU, Eric studied playwriting under Charles Whitman and Max Golightly, and took an advanced writing seminar taught by Orson Scott Card. He had several plays produced, including Letter from a Prophet, about Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail, and wrote the libretto for the opera Emma, collaborating with the composer Murry Boren.

Eric met his wife, Annette Mason, in the BYU Oratorio Choir. They were married in the Oakland LDS Temple in 1980. Annette later became the publications coordinator and office manager for BYU Studies.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree in theatre from BYU in 1983, he entered the graduate program at Indiana University, located in his home town. He studied playwriting, as well as the theatre history, completing his PhD dissertation, “Ibsen’s Brand: Interpretive Approaches in Production History”, in 1991.

After teaching for a year at Indiana University and Wright State University, he was hired by the BYU Theatre Department in 1992. Although he was hired to teach critical studies, he quickly made a name for himself as a playwright. His 1993 play Accommodations, about Mormon family members jockeying to avoid having to take primary care of a difficult father in decline, was widely hailed, and was published the next year in Sunstone Magazine. His next two major plays, The Seating of Senator Smoot (1996) and Gadianton (1997) demonstrated that he was interested in writing works that addressed his Mormon community. Gadiaton in particular, with its mixture of Book of Mormon imagery with a radical critique of the focus on wealth in contemporary Mormon society, made clear that Eric intended to use his art to speak to what he saw as the places where Mormon culture did not live up to its theology.

In 2006, when Mahonri Stewart asked him why he was drawn to Mormon Theater, he replied,

To be honest, it was sort of an epiphany. When I got home from my mission in 1977, I had a summer job, and one Saturday, I was sitting at home, and the new Ensign had just arrived. It was the July 1977 Ensign, the special edition dedicated to the Arts, and it included President Kimball’s talk ‘A Gospel Vision of the Arts.’. . . I’d been in theatre my whole life, I’d been around opera singers my whole life, and it just made sense, to try to write. And then I read that great talk by President Kimball. This passage just nailed me to the wall:

“For years I have been waiting for someone to do justice in recording in song and story and painting and sculpture the story of the Restoration, the reestablishment of the kingdom of God on earth, the struggles and frustrations; the apostasies and inner revolutions and counter-revolutions of those first decades; of the exodus; of the counter-reactions; of the transitions; of the persecution days; of the miracle man, Joseph Smith, of whom we sing ‘Oh, what rapture filled his bosom, For he saw the living God’ (Hymns, no. 136); and of the giant colonizer and builder, Brigham Young.”

What I loved about it was the implication that we could and should write about conflicts in our culture, about difficulties and struggles, about ‘apostacies and inner revolutions and counter-revolutions.’ I knew that day that I needed to write about my own culture. And that’s what I’ve been drawn to. Of course, I write about other things as well, but I do seem to have found something of a niche.

In 1999, Tim Slover, who had taught playwriting at BYU, moved to University of Utah, and Samuelsen was asked to take his place at the BYU playwriting instructor. He also frequently directed plays. Eric took a lead in encouraging student playwrights, and pushed the department to include plays by students and former students in the BYU main stage theatrical seasons. Melissa Leilani Larson, Matthew Greene, Morag Plaice Shepherd, Katherine Gee Perrone, Javen Tanner, Josh Brady, Tony Gunn, Leslie Gunn, Elizabeth Leavitt, Ariel Mitchell, and LeeAnne Hill Adams are among Eric’s former students who have seen success as playwrights.

Eric worked with a wide variety of artists, both inside and outside BYU. He was an active participant in AML-List, the Mormon literature internet discussion group, from soon after its founding in 1995. He frequently stated his ideas about theater, film, and cultural trends both inside and outside of the Church. He served on the AML board from 2002, and as president of the group in 2007-2009. While serving as president he oversaw the transition of discussion from the AML-List to this blog, encouraged the activity of a student AML group at BYU, and wrote this memorable Presidential address.

He was very interested in the sudden growth in LDS films from 2000. Concerned about the number of low-quality films, he offered LDS screenwriters to send him their pre-production scripts, promising to offer critiques and suggestions for free. He encouraged friends in their creation of theaters and theater companies, and participated by offering his plays to be performed in these small venues. Among those he worked with were Thom Duncan and Scott Bronson’s Nauvoo Theatrical Society in Orem, the student-run New Play Project (led by James Goldberg, and later Davey Morrison), and Scott Bronson during his time programing plays at the Covey Center for the Arts in Provo.

In 2003 Eric first encountered the Plan-B Theatre Company, a Salt Lake City company led by Jerry Rapier. Eric participated for several years in their annual “SLAM” event, in which playwrights were given 24 hours to write and produce a 10-minute play. From its start the company had a particular focus on issues of gender and sexuality, themes which Eric was interested in including in his own works. As he faced increasing barriers at BYU to get on stage the kind of plays that dealt with the moral issues he found important, Plan-B gave him space to explore these themes. He said to Mahonri Stewart,

Discovering Plan B was a tremendous thing for me because I love the people there and I love the opportunity to write for a different audience than I had been writing for. I’ve enjoyed writing plays with a bit more political edge; it’s really been liberating for me. I haven’t abandoned LDS audiences, not at all. I have three new plays coming out in the next three months and two of them are overtly and directly LDS, so I’ve hardly left my roots behind. And this new audience I’m writing for is, after all, just 40 miles north in Salt Lake City. But Salt Lake is a pretty liberal town, and I feel like I’m among friends up there.

In 2012 Eric was granted an early retirement from BYU because of his polymyositis. In the year before his retirement, some members of the administration had become increasingly vocal with their discomfort with the kind of plays that Eric was writing. The medical-based retirement, therefore, helped to solve the impasse with the administration.

That year Plan-B named Eric a “Playwright in Residence”. They produced one of his plays as part of their season every year from 2010 to 2017. In 2013 Rapier declared a “Season of Eric”, announcing that Plan-B was dedicating its entire five-play 2013-2014 season to productions of works by or translated by Eric. The runs of Eric’s plays at Plan-B, including Miasma, Borderlands, Amerigo, Nothing Personal, Clearing Bombs, 3, Kruetzer’s Sonata, and The Ice Front, were almost always sold out. While still frequently writing about Mormon characters and Mormon themes, his reach had grown beyond Utah Valley, and he took his place as Utah’s leading playwright during the last decade of his life.

In 2015 he commented,

Mormon culture today does, to some extent, reflect the best, most inspired parts of Mormon theology. But it also reflects the worst elements of modern mainstream conservative American middle-class culture, as well, of course, the best elements of that culture.

So as a Mormon, as a liberal, and as an artist, I feel that my task is to reflect the best expressions of my own culture, and either ignore or- very occasionally and carefully- even attack the most retrograde aspects of that culture. Homophobia is clearly the new racism-it’s the thing we have to overcome. And sexism- it just has no place in the exalted doctrines of salvation.

And some of my work has challenged mainstream culture. Certainly, I would never think ‘should my characters use that kind of language, as a Mormon, should I write that kind of dialogue?’ Those kinds of cultural considerations aren’t any part of my process. There was a time when I did self-censor; it held me back artistically, and with great personal difficulty, I discarded it. And feel great about doing so. And felt absolutely comfortable in my relationship with my Heavenly Father afterwards.

In 2012, Eric began blogging at Mormoniconoclast.com, frequently commenting on recent movies, music, culture, and the scriptures. Although his medical condition deteriorated over his last seven years, he continued to write, and to encourage and challenge others in their literary and spiritual growth.

He is survived by his wife, Annette and their four children, Kai (Angela) Samuelsen, Rebekah Owens, Tucker Samuelsen, and Lexie (Andrew) Dalton.

Funeral services will be held at 11:00 a.m., Friday, September 27, 2019 at the Grandview 3rd Ward Chapel, 900 West 2150 North, Provo, Utah. Friends may visit with the family at the Berg Mortuary of Provo, 185 East Center Street, Thursday, September 26 from 6-8 p.m. and at the church Friday from 10-10:50 a.m. prior to services. Interment, Provo City Cemetery. Condolences may be expressed at www.bergmortuary.com.

Eric was one-of-a-kind, losing him is a terrible blow. We are blessed to enjoy his legacy in terms of his art and the talent he nurtured. We hope his family will be comforted in this time of sorrow.

A bibliography of the work of Eric Samuelsen

Plays (written and translated)

1970s

Letter From a Prophet, based on an outline by Charles Metten. Produced at BYU, Fall 1978. Directed by Charles Metten.
A Girl Who Blushes. One act. Produced April, 1978, at the Mormon Festival of the Arts at BYU.
Playing the Game. Produced in 1979 at BYU. Written for Orson Scott Card’s writing class. It got on the BYU season and went on to a Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival regional production

1980s

Emma. Opera libretto, music by Murray Boren. Produced at BYU Subsequently, produced by Hell’s Kitchen Opera company in 1984. Additional productions in 1990 and 1992.
A Man of the Eighties, Indiana U. 1987. Comedy, filmed and aired on PBS in 1987.
Sex and the New York Yankees. One act. Produced by Bloomington Playwrights Project, Bloomington Indiana, 1988. Comedy about “overrated things”.
Derrida’s Dead Cat. 198?.

1990s

Accommodations. Produced at BYU, 1993. Subsequently, published in Sunstone, June Won AML annual award in drama, 1994. Directed by Thomas Rogers.
The Bottom of the Ninth. Apocalyptic comedy, Workshopped in BYU WDA, 1995.,
The Seating of Senator Smoot. Produced at BYU, 1996. Directed by Robert Nelson. The play was also videotaped and broadcast on KBYU.
Gadianton. Produced at BYU, 1997. Directed by Robert Nelson. Subsequently published in Sunstone, July 2001. Won AML award in drama, 1997. Subsequently produced at University of Louisiana at Monroe. Anthologized in Mahonri Stewart, Saints on Stage. Zarahemla Press, 2013.
Winding Sheet. SLAC staged reading, Dec. 1998. About a Victorian social reformer and prostitution.
Without Romance. Produced at BYU, 1997. Subsequently produced at Mormon Arts Festival, 1998. Missionaries, sex, and liberal-conservative tension.
The Christmas Box. Music by Murray Boren. Adapted from the novel by Richard Paul Evans. Produced as a musical at BYU, Pardoe Theater, 1997. Directed by Rodger Sorensen.
Prayers From Winter Quarters. 1998. Text of orchestral piece by Murray Boren. Atonal challenging style of music. 5 poems written from POV of pioneer women.
Erasmus Montanus, 1998, BYU. 1772 play by Ludvig Holberg, in Danish, that Eric almost completely rewrote and turned into wild visual affair.
Coughlaugh. A theatrical experiment in one act. Blaine Sundrud directed a production at BYUin 1998. Later produced in 2010 at Brigham Young University.
The Way We’re Wired. Produced at BYU, 1999. Won AML award for drama, 1999. Subsequently produced by Nauvoo Theatrical Society in Orem in 2003, directed by Eric Samuelsen. Eric wrote a novel based on the play, Singled Out. Cornerstone, 2000.
Bar and Kell. One act performed at Sunstone, 1999. Reactivation of a new ward member causes unintended consequences.Published in Irreantum, Spring 2000.

2000s

A Love Affair with Electrons. Produced at BYU Directed by Eric Samuelsen. About Philo Farnsworth, with scenes done in parody of contemporary TV shows.
Three Women. 3 one act plays on Mormon women, VIP Arts’ Little Brown Theatre, Springville, 2001. Bar and Kell, Community Standard(about apornography case) and Judgment(aboutdate rapeat BYU).
What Really Happened. Student production at BYU, 2001. Disturbing play about a couple doing bad things. There is a recording of a reading at a Sunstone Symposium.
A Very Good Impression. 2001, excerpted at the New York Mormon artists gala. BYU professor and grad students try to impress each other.
Slaying the Greeble.BYU WDA Workshop reading, 2001. For young audiences.
Magnificence. March 2002, BYU Margetts. Eric adapted this medieval play by John Skelton.
Peculiarities. Several one acts, produced in several iterations. Tony Gunn directed four one acts in Springville, 2002. Plan B Theatre produced three one acts in 2004, including Kiss, which was not included in the production Tony Gunn directed. Published in installments in Sunstone in 2005-2007. Peculiarities: Pizza and Movie, in Sunstone 2006. Peculiarities: NCMO, Sunstone, March 2007. Jerry Rapier directed a film version in 2006, with all six short plays included, which was screened at Sunstone. An audio file of the screening exists, but there is no commercial copies of the film currently for sale.
Mount Vernon. BYU WDA workshop, 2002. George Washington is visited by a modern black history professor.
Family. Produced at BYU in 2005. Directed by David Morgan. Won AML Drama award. Subsequently produced at Dixie College in St. George, UT, in 2006. Published in SunstoneMarch 2005.
Miasma. First done as ten-minute play for Plan-B Theatre Company SLAM, 2005, as The Butcher, The Beggar and the Bed-time Buddy. Subsequently produced as full-length play at Plan-B, 2006, published in Plan-B’s Plays From Beyond the Zion Curtain. How agri-business and corporate culture is destroying the older family values of ranching culture.
Blood Pudding, 10-minute play, done for Plan-B Theatre Company SLAM, 2006.
Little Eyolf. 2006. Translation of an Ibsen play, produced in San Diego by former BYU students.
Behind the Blue Door, 10-minute play, done for Plan-B Theatre Company SLAM, 2007.
Burning Desire, 10-minute play, done for Plan-B Theatre Company SLAM, 2008.
Perfect Circle, 10-minute play, done for Plan-B Theatre Company/Theatre Arts Conservatory Student SLAM, 2009.
Inversion. Produced by Theatre Arts Conservatory, Salt Lake, Rose Wagner, 2008.
Intersection. Produced by Theatre Arts Conservatory, Salt Lake, Rose Wagner, 2009.

2010s

He and She Fighting: A Love Story. New Play Project in Provo, 2010. Directed by Davey Morrison-Dillard. Comic short play.
Amerigo. Produced by Plan-B Theatre Company in Salt Lake City, 2010. Subsequently, published in More Plays from Behind the Zion Curtain. Amerigo Vespucci and Christopher Columbus debate about America, moderated by Machiavelli, with Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz as judge. SLC Weekly Readers’ Choice “Best Local Theater Production”.
A Doll’s House. UVU, 2010. New translation of the Ibsen play in American idiom. UVU director set it in the 1950s America.
Borderlands. Produced by Plan-B Theatre Companyin Salt Lake City, 2011. Directed by Jerry Rapier. Published in Sunstone, March 2011. Published in 2012 in Plan-B’s Even More Plays from Behind the Zion Curtain. Coming out in Mormon culture.
The Plan. Brinton Black Box Theater in the Covey Center for the Arts, Provo UT, 2011. Published in Sunstone, July 2009. Explores the LDS plan of salvation through the stories of Old Testament women and men, Ruth and Boaz, Jacob and Leah, Adam and Eve. One of the segments, Gaia, appeared as part of the New Play Project production, Fire and Rain, in 2008, and was included in the Out of the Mount: 19 From New Play Project, a 2010 collection of plays that were part of the New Play Project, edited by Davey Morrison. The Gaia segment, directed by Gideon Burton, is available on Youtube. Another segment, Rachel’s Sister, appeared in the Provo Covey Center anthology, Anthology of Love, 2008. Another segment, Eve Dying, was published in Stephen Carter, editor, Moth and Rust: Mormon Encounters With Death. Signature Books, 2017.
Blind Dates. Covey Center for the Arts, 2012. Four humorous short plays, all with the same title, about blind dates gone wrong. Inspired by the late Horton Foote’s original work. Eric Samuelsen, J. Scott Bronson and Melissa Lelani Larson created original works to go along with the original play by Foote.
A Mess of Pottage. Orem Public Library staged reading, 2013.
Ghosts. Henrik Ibsen, translated by Eric. Plan-B Theatre Company, 2013. The first in the “Season of Eric”.
Nothing Personal. Produced by Plan-B Theatre Company in Salt Lake City, Rose Wagner, 2013. Directed by Jerry Rapier. Based on the imprisonment of Susan McDougal, jailed for contempt of court for her refusal to lie before Kenneth Starr’s grand jury.
Radio Hour Episode 8: Fairyana. Produced by Plan-B Theatre Company in Salt Lake City, Rose Wagner, 2013. Directed by Cheryl Ann Cluff.
Clearing Bombs. Produced by Plan-B Theatre Company in Salt Lake City, Rose Wagner, 2014. Directed by Eric Samuelsen.
3. Produced by Plan-B Theatre Company in Salt Lake City, Rose Wagner, 2014. Directed by Cheryl Ann Cluff. Three short plays, Bar and Kell,Community Standard, and Duets,about Mormon women confronting their own culture, two of which were earlier produced as Three Women. In Bar and Kell, two women help a single mother and confront their own motives. In Community Standard, a woman serving on the jury of an indecency trial is forced to confront issues in her own marriage. And in Duets, a woman confronts the choices she has made by marrying a gay man. Duetswas later anthologized in Gerald S. Argetsinger, Jeff Laver, Johnny Townsend, editors. Latter-Gay Saints: An Anthology of Gay Mormon Fiction. 2013.
Kruetzer’s Sonata. Plan-B Theatre Company in Salt Lake City, Rose Wagner, October 2015, Jerry Rapier directing. Adapted from a short story by Leo Tolstoy. Published in Plan-B’s Twenty-Fifth Anniversary (2016).
The Ice Front. Plan-B, 2017. A dramatic company in Norway during the Nazi occupation faces a demand from the Nazis to perform a piece of propaganda. Also a reading at Pioneer Theater Company earlier in 2017. Published in Plan-B’s 2017/18 SEASON(2018).
A short play in (in)divisible. Plan-B Theatre, 2017. A series of five-minute plays by Utah playwrights presented as part of Plan-B’s Script-In-Hand Series.
Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival, 2018. Cassandra and Agamemnon travel home from the Trojan war. She knows they will both be murdered when they arrive in Thebes. He refuses to believe her.

Several of Eric’s playscripts are available from Zion’s Theatricals. They include: The Way We’re Wired, Family,The Plan, Prayers From Winter Quarters,Gadianton,Without Romance, and The Seating of Senator Smoot.

Prose fiction

“The Day Mrs. Gibson Shot our Cat.” Century II, 5:1, 1980.

Singled Out. Cornerstone, 2000. Novelized version of the play “The Way We’re Wired.”

“Miracle”. Dialogue, 38:2, Summer 2005. Republished in Angella Hallsrom, editor, Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction.

Scholarship and non-fiction essays

“Ibsen’s Brand: Interpretive Approaches in Production History” Indiana University dissertation, 1991.

Eric Samuelsen, Cheng-yu Xiong, and Nola D. Smith. Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler: A Study Guide. Brigham Young University, 1992.

“Occupation Theater: Ibsen’s Brandin Performance in Norway, 1940-1942”. Scandenavian Studies, 66:4, 1994.

Review of Kathleen Stooker. Folklore Fights the Nazis: Humor in Occupied Norway, 1940-1945. In Scandinavian Studies, 68:4, Fall 1996.

“Wither Mormon Drama: Look First to a Theatre.” Brigham Young University Studies, 35:1, 1995. First given as a presentation at the 1995 AML Conference.

“Glenn Beck, Cleon Skousen, Amerigo Vespucci, & Me” Sunstone 158, March 2010.

“The Roots of My Faith, Part I” Sunstone, 2012.

“The Roots of My Faith, Part II” Sunstone, 2012.

“Mormon Drama”. In J. Michael Hunter, editor. Mormons and Popular Culture: The Global Influence of an American Phenomenon. Praeger, 2013.

“Book review of Re-Reading Job: Understanding the Ancient World’s Greatest Poem, by Michael Austin” 2014.

“Daivd G. Pace’s Dream House on Golan Drive(book review)”17 Bytes, 2015.

“Three Mormon Playwrights: Neil LaBute, Tim Slover, and Melissa Leilani Larson” in The Kimball Challenge at Fifty: Mormon Arts Center Essays. 2017. The paper was given at the first Mormon Arts Festival in New York City, 2017. James Goldman reads the paper for Eric, in this recording on Youtube.

AML Conference presentations

“Wither Mormon Drama: Look First to a Theatre.” Published in the 1995 AML Annual.
“A Voice Unheard: Reflections on the Poetry of Florence Bale”. Published in the 1999 AML Annual.
“Typically Mormon: Neil Labute, Johnny Whitaker, Donny and Marie and the Mormonizing of Popular Culture”
“My Big Fat Greek Wedding as a Model for LDS Filmmakers”. Published in the 2004 AML Annual.
“Moving Past Infancy: Competing Economic Models in Mormon Cinema”
“AML Presidential Address: Towards a Mission, Minus a Statement.”
“Beyond Hagiography: The Huebener Paradox”
“Edward W. Tullidge and ‘Ben Israel’: The First Mormon Playwright in Light of his Best Play”
“Should Mormons Study Literature?”
“Mormon Historical Drama”