We are pleased to announce the 2019 Association for Mormon Letters Awards finalists in Drama and Film. The final awards will be announced and presented on May 2 at the AML Conference, held in Salt Lake City. We will be announcing the other category finalists over the coming week. The finalists and winners are chosen by juries of authors, academics, and critics. The announcements include book blurbs and author biographies, adapted from the author and publisher websites.
Drama
The Drama Award is based solely not scripts, not on productions. The judge for the category wrote: “I felt that this was a particularly strong year for drama by LDS playwrights. There seemed to be themes throughout all of the pieces of finding our divine identity, choosing to embrace it in ourselves, and choosing to emphasize it in others. There were many shows that had shining moments of faith, discovery, trial, and repentance, but these three scripts really stood out as complete works of compelling, meaningful drama that explore what it means to be ‘religious.’ Although only one finalist addresses the ‘Mormon’ experience directly, both of the others delve deeply into how faith is an active choice that requires us to have the strength to throw everything we value as human people out of the window, or even risk our very lives for what truly matters. And in seeing these characters make the unfathomable choices, we feel the bigger Reason for it all.”
Carolyn Chatwin Murset. Tales of Tila.
“A musical biography of my Grandma Domitila Trujillo, 1902-1971, Taos, New Mexico.” A one-woman show, performed at Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico and St. George, Utah, September-October 2019. “Tila was patient, optimistic, beautiful, and wise. As a young girl who struggled to make soft tortillas good enough for her older brothers to chew, not crunch, and swallow down with choking, she had the faith that her prayers for help, would help. They did. I’m glad she wrote about it in her brief personal history when she was 57 years old. She also wrote about going to boarding school in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she learned to knit and crochet with the other girls. She and Grandpa Trujillo exchanged notes to each other in a ledger. Back in the year 2000, I transcribed the juicier parts of the messages that she and Grandpa wrote to each other. She also kept family records, as many others have done in a family bible. Join Tila on her journey through the 
first half of the twentieth century, as she experiences friends her age leaving to serve in the Great War (as World War One was called back then), the Spanish Flu Epidemic, joining the LDS Church when Mormon missionaries arrive in Taos, marrying her friend’s brother at age 17, waiting three years for him to also join the LDS Church, the Great Depression, World War Two and her husbands contribution toward the creation of the Atomic Bomb in the secret city of Los Alamos, New Mexico.”
Carolyn Murset is a playwright, actress, and musician. She has produced several music CDs, and produces the Song Stories, Quiet Stories Podcast.
Taylor Hatch. Project X.
In 1944, a high school science teacher reads a newspaper ad, “Physicists Needed for Project X: a Project that will Win the War.” Eager to aid in the war effort, he whisks his young family off to a secret city in the hills of Tennessee where he soon learns that his assignment is much heavier than anticipated. As the weight of the responsibility and secrecy threatens to pull his family apart, he must make a choice that will affect generations to come. Based on the true story of the writer’s great-grandparents, Project X looks back at an era marked by a loss of humanity to find the courage and compassion that kept one small family together. It was produced by MOD Theatre Company, The Secret Theatre, NYC, April 2019.
Taylor Hatch is a NYC-based playwright and director. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from University of California Riverside and a BA in Theatre Studies from BYU. Project X was a finalist for Caltech/Pasadena Playhouse’s Mach 33 and semi-finalist in the Premiere Stages New Play Festival, was presented in the Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights at the Barter Theatre, and was produced by MOD Theatre Co at the Secret Theatre in NYC. Her musical AirBorn (co-writer Jordan Kamalu) was a NAMT finalist and was workshopped at Utah Valley University, presented in the Tuacahn Center for the Arts New Works Series, and is undergoing development with Apples and Oranges Studios. Her other plays have been presented at KCACTF (regional and national finalist), the Hudson Guild Theatre, and Toronto’s Theatre InspiraTO. She is a current member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Librettists Workshop, and the 2018 Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab. She recently directed premieres of new works Theodore in the Valley in Fort Tryon Park, A Night Song at the NYC Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, and directed and adapted Music at the Close, a musical exploration of Shakespeare’s Richard II, with the Glassbox Collective at Carnegie Hall.
Melissa Leilani Larson. Bitter Lemon.
A woman and a man with an awkward history find themselves together in the hereafter. Bitter Lemon was a commission written to accommodate a specific production conceit: two different actors performed it cold each night, script in hand, discovering the story and the characters along with the audience. Produced at the Creekside Theatre Festival, Heritage Park, Cedar Hills, Utah, in June 2019.
Originally from Hau‘ula, Hawai‘i, Melissa Leilani Larson is a writer based in Salt Lake City. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Mels work in 2019 included four world premieres: her stage adaption of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, commissioned by Utah Valley University, Sweetheart Come at PYGmalion Theatre Company, Bitter Lemon, and an adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s The Post Office at Plan-B Theatre. Previously produced plays include: The Edible Complex, Pilot Program, Pride and Prejudice, Little Happy Secrets, Persuasion, Martyrs’ Crossing, A Flickering, Lady in Waiting, and The Weaver of Raveloe. Little Happy Secrets and Pilot Program were published together in a book titled Third Wheel (BCC Press, 2017). Mel’s produced screenplays include Jane and Emma and Freetown (both of which were AML Film Award finalists). Mel was a contributing writer to the LDS Church History Department’s Saints series. Mel is the only woman to receive more than one Association for Mormon Letters Drama award and is the youngest person to win three. She was also awarded the 2018 Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters.
Narrative Feature Films
The Fighting Preacher. Directed by T.C. Christensen.
Based on the true story of Willard and Rebecca Bean. In 1905 Bean became the World Middle-Weight Boxing Champion, but when Joseph F. Smith asked him to step away from the limelight and serve a 5-year mission to Palmyra, New York, the Beans immediately pack their bags and travel to the east coast. Once there, they find the hatred that existed 90 years prior is still alive and very present. After 24 years in the community, they eventually become loved and respected by one and all.
T.C. Christensen is the director or cinematographer behind the films The Cokevile Miracle, Love, Kennedy, 17 Miracles; Emma Smith: My Story (Morning Dew); Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration (LDS Church); Testaments (LDS Church); The Work & the Glory (Manchester Pictures); Forever Strong (Go Films); Sea Monsters (National Geographic); Roving Mars (Disney); Only a Stonecutter (LDS Church), and many others. T.C. has won over 270 national and international awards for his work in directing and photography.
The Other Side of Heaven 2: Fire of Faith. Directed by Mitch Davis.
John Groberg returns to Tonga in the 1960s for his second round of missionary adventures, this time bringing his wife and family. When their son is born critically ill, the Grobergs face the ultimate test of their faith, only to find themselves surrounded by the love and prayers of thousands of Tongans of all denominations. Barriers of inter-religious strife are broken down as an entire nation unites in hopes of a miracle that will save the baby’s life, as well as that of a Tongan minister’s son who is in a coma in an adjacent hospital room.
Mitch Davis earned a MA in film production from the University of Southern California in 1989. Concurrently, he was hired as a creative executive at Disney where he worked on such films as Dead Poet’s Society, White Fang, The Rocketeer, and Newsies. In 1993, Davis wrote and co-directed the Disney Channel film, Windrunner. That coming of age film sequel into his next picture, 2001’s Disney-distributed The Other Side of Heaven. Other films include A House Divided (AKA Language of the Enemy) (2007), Christmas Eve (2015) and The Stray (2017).
Out of Liberty. Directed by Garrett Batty.
Winter 1839. Liberty, Missouri. Local jailer, Samuel Tillery is tasked with watching Missouri’s most wanted men, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as they await their upcoming hearing. Caught between the local Missourians’ increased drive to remove the prisoners, and the prisoners’ desperate efforts to survive, Tillery is pushed beyond what any lawman can endure.
Garrett Batty graduated from the BYU film program. He has written and directed the films Scout Camp (2009), The Saratov Approach (2013, AML Award winner), Freetown (2015, AML Award finalist), and the documentary The Journey Home (2016).
Documentary Feature Films
After Selma. Directed by Loki Mulholland.
Emmy-winning filmmaker, Loki Mulholland (“The Uncomfortable Truth”), civil rights veteran, Joanne Blackmon Bland, and New York Times bestselling author, Carol Anderson (“White Rage”) dive into the history of voter suppression and the need for us to challenge it in order to preserve our democracy and equality for all.
Loki Mulholland is the son of Civil Rights legend Joan Trumpauer Mulholland. Loki has won multiple film festival awards, Best of State, and the Filmed in Utah Award. His first book, She Stood for Freedom, an illustrated children’s book about the life of his mother, was an AML Picture Book finalist. His award-winning film, An Ordinary Hero, also about his mother, appeared on PBS. Loki has spoken all over the country on the subject of the Civil Rights Movement and current race relations.
The Jets: Making it Real. Directed by Kels Goodman.
An introspective look at the Wolfgramms, a Tongan-American Latter-day Saint family, and their band The Jets, following the band’s journey through its success in the ’80s with songs like “Crush on You” and “Make It Real” to its dissolution around 1997 and the group’s attempted comeback in 2009. Differences of opinion divided the original band members into two groups that drifted apart, but are beginning to make amends.
Kels Goodman directed the films Handcart and The Last Boy Scout, as well as being a cinematographer and producers of several films. He has owned and run the LDS Film Festival since 2017.
Jimmer: The Lonely Master. Directed by Scott Christopherson.
A BYUtv documentary about basketball star Jimmer Fredette’s career in the Chinese Basketball Association and aspirations to return to the NBA. Titled after the nickname Fredette has earned from his sizeable fanbase in China, the intimate, 75-minute film shadows him throughout his astronomical 2017-2018 season with the Shanghai Sharks. It also traces the beginnings of his childhood dream to play in the NBA, and the highs and lows of Fredette’s career, from high school basketball star to record shattering NCAA National Player of the Year to the unexpected end of his five years in the NBA and his deep desire to return. It explores the universal theme of what it takes to make a dream come true, what you do when it seems like it won’t, and the choice to never give up.
Scott Christopherson is on the faculty of the BYU Theatre and Media Arts Department. Among his previous documentaries, Peace Officer won the 2015 AML Film Award and The Insufferable Groo was a 2018 AML Documentary Film Award finalist.
Short Films
Father of Man. Directed by Barrett Burgin.
When Boyd dies and finds himself in the great beyond, he learns that his estranged son is about to make the worst decision of his life–and only Boyd can stop him.
Paper Trails. Directed by Heather Moser.
Following a rough breakup, Jamie’s life is turned around as mysterious notes appear and interfere with attempts to reconcile her feelings.
Stickup Kid. Directed by Daniel Tu.
A reformed teenage armed robber struggles to forget his past—but when a pair of criminals stick up his restaurant, he must use his former expertise to save the day.
Man and Kin. Directed by Max Johnson.
Quiet, gruff Cody takes solace in his new job- the night guard of an eccentric hobbyist’s mannequin village. But he can only live in this fantasy for so long before reality catches up to him.
Please note and correct:
Tales of Tila was performed in SANTA FE, capital of New Mexico.