BY DARRYL STAMP
Darryl Stamp has been a member of Plan-B Theatre’s Theatre Artists of Color Writing Workshop since its inception in 2017.
In 2019, his short play "Roar" premiered as part of Plan-B’s ...OF COLOR. In 2020, his short play "Mis En Place" was commissioned by Plan-B at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown as part of the national Play at Home initiative. It is now part of the COVID-19 Response Collection housed in the Library of Congress. Also in 2020, Darryl produced and directed a reading of an earlier version of DUMBED DOWN as part of that year's all-virtual Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival. In 2023, his play GO HOME COME BACK premiered at Plan-B and, in 2024, his monologue "American Survival Story" premiered as part of Plan-B's FULL COLOR.
Darryl has been an adjunct acting instructor for Weber State University since 2019 and a teaching artist for Plan-B’s Playwriting With Young People (grades K-6) and Playwriting With Young Adults (grades 7-12) programs in Salt Lake City schools since 2022.
A retired high school teacher, DUMBED DOWN reflects on and is inspired by Darryl's 25-year career as an educator.
I come from a family of high school graduates.
None of my immediate family members earned a college degree, so I didn't have an empowering educational support system. I attended elementary, junior high, and high school in Brooklyn, New York. Each of these schools were teeming with students from diverse ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds.
Only one teacher—an English teacher in junior high school—saw any potential in me. In seventh grade I wrote a story about a show I had watched on television. I titled it, "The Elevator." This was before I knew anything about plagiarism and there was no capability to record and save programs. My English teacher gave me an A and wrote at the top of it, "Excellent! You could be a writer someday." He obviously hadn't seen that T.V. show!
I didn't realize until decades later that I had a grasp of syntax and diction as a seventh grader. I still have that essay. It's the only thing I wrote before some poetry about racism for a literary magazine at a college I failed to graduate from.
Mr. Cooper was the only teacher in elementary, middle school, and high school to see any potential in me.
Without a bachelor’s degree, I worked as a line cook, waiter, insurance investigator, standup comedian, a Kansas Department of Corrections halfway house employee, and an actor.
Eventually, I earned a graduate degree in education and became a teacher myself.
I spent my first four years teaching at an inner-city high school. The faculty was mostly Caucasian. My first year was especially difficult, and I was ready to quit by Halloween. Our student body was about 55% African American, 35% Latino, and 10% Caucasian. But being well trained, innovative, patient, having a sense of humor, and seeing a bit of myself in my students, I was able to relate to the them and help them realize their potential. In four years, my students went from saying, "Yo! Mr. Stamp, you so stupid!" to "Yo bro, I see what you did there, that was a sarcasm joint!"
That initial eye-opening teaching experience, coupled with meeting folks who became my mentors at Weber State University after I moved to Utah, solidified my desire to continue teaching. I found myself fortunate enough to work with another diverse student body at Hunter High School, from which I retired in 2019.
My teaching experiences reinforced my belief that if you create an interesting and relevant curriculum and genuinely care about students, success is possible. Especially if you’re a competent male teacher of color (which is highly underrepresented in the field of education).
My play DUMBED DOWN is not about me. And yet, my experiences as a student, my work in the field of criminal justice, and my work with students to help them achieve academic success, career success, and societal readiness are all in it.
I think Mr. Cooper would like it too.
TICKETS
DUMBED DOWN by Darryl Stamp receives its world premiere February 12-March 1, 2026 at Plan-B Theatre in the Studio Theatre at The Rose. Please click here for details and to purchase tickets.
BY MATTHEW IVAN BENNETT
Matt has been a Resident Playwright at Plan-B Theatre since 2007, where he’s premiered several stage and radio plays, including 13 of the 17 episodes of RADIO HOUR, and ERIC(A), which won Best Drama at the United Solo Theatre Festival in New York. He wrote the screenplay for The Whole Lot, which screened at the Philadelphia, Mesa, San Francisco, and Mumbai indie film festivals. His poetry has been published with Sugar House Review, Western Humanities Review, unearthed, and Utah Life. Over the last decade, he has workshopped new work at Salt Lake Acting Company and Pioneer Theatre Company, and seen his plays onstage at Wasatch Theatre Company, Pacific Play Company, Pygmalion Theatre Company, and Meanwhile Park.
When I can't fall asleep, I visualize myself on Great Salt Lake, paddling a canoe into the sunset. I used to sail there with my dad and I know just what the twilit water looks like—those swells of uncanny light, turquoise and salmon. That image of the lake has talismanic power for me, representing love, ease, and the creative mind itself.
I wish it weren't so, but the lake is dying. It's simple: more water is evaporating from the lake's surface every year than is flowing into the lake. In a fairy tale, a hero would leave her village and find out where the water went. She'd confront the greedy giant or sorcerer. She'd fight him, or trick him, and the water would flow again.
Unfortunately, this isn't a fairy tale. In real life, the hero and giant are the same: they're human civilization along the Wasatch Front. The "giant" part of us is polylithic: it's consumerism, it's commercial agriculture, mineral extraction, municipalities, pro-growth policies at every level; it's the real estate sector and the fifth-acre-per-family zoning of the American Dream.
I wish I could write a fairy tale about the lake, but what we need is a levelheaded but hopeful piece, one in the playful mold of Maria Irene Fornés. We need a dramatization that grapples with the hyperobject that is our lake in peril while featuring the fantastic reporting of the Great Salt Lake Collaborative. We need to help Utahns and others understand the science, the politics, the economics, and spiritual costs of the lake in peril and recovery.
Salt Lake City is my hometown. The air quality is personal to me. Seeing the exposed lake bed, the tannish dots on my windshield, is personal to me. I don't want to be a climate refugee. I don't want to have to leave here. I don't want to stop imagining myself on the lake as I'm falling to sleep because no one canoes there anymore. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, we're now experiencing 15 dust events per year. That number could easily rise if we — as journalists, as scientists, as artists, as citizens — don't demand collective action to save the lake. Sometimes I feel like there's so little I can do, but in this case I knew exactly what I could do: write. Write the most passionate and informed play possible about how we save the lake. Draw on the work of scientists and journalists and activists and inspire people by showing them what we can and must do in defense of our home.
Read more about how playwrights Matthew Ivan Bennett and Elaine Jarvik worked together.
TICKETS
JUST ADD WATER by Matthew Ivan Bennett & Elaine Jarvik receives its world premiere October 2-19 at Plan-B Theatre in the Studio Theatre at The Rose. Please click here for details and to purchase single tickets or subscribe.
BY MATTHEW IVAN BENNETT & ELAINE JARVIK
Plan-B Theatre's Artistic Director Jerry Rapier chatted with playwrights Matthew Ivan Bennett and Elaine Jarvik about the process of co-creating JUST ADD WATER.
How did this partnership come to be?
Matt: I rarely collaborate, but after two positive experiences with other writers at Pacific Play Company in Seattle, I decided to approach Elaine about collaborating on this play. I initially imagined we'd both write a bunch of short pieces and then combine them somehow. That's sort of what happened, but Elaine had the idea of sending a personified lake on a hero's journey.
Elaine: Matt asked if I wanted to collaborate on a play about the Great Salt Lake and I jumped at the chance, both because I admire him immensely and because my interest in the lake’s fate had been piqued by news reports and by my work on “Eb & Flo,” my Great Salt Lake play for grades K-3.
What made you nervous about writing together?
Matt: I suppose I was nervous about letting my strong opinions get in the way of our creative flow. But Elaine's background as a journalist, I think, counteracted my attachments. She's a gifted editor and never afraid to say "I don't know about this." In a way, her simply saying "I don't know about this" was enough to make me reconsider my approach to a scene or a line. We both ended up throwing a lot of material away. And we ended up deciding to rework our approach to many scenes just by talking through the weak points. It's very different to how I've written before, where I've put something out there, gotten feedback, and then rewritten. At every stage, Elaine and I discussed the point of scenes (as opposed to just critiquing), and that discussion became the basis, really, of the collaboration.
Elaine: Collaboration as writers can be tricky (whose voice will it be, will we agree about what to emphasize, etc.). Most of all, though, I worried that I wouldn’t be smart enough to keep up with him.
What excited you about writing together?
Matt: Well, in general, it's somewhat of a relief to know that you're not responsible for everything alone, and that you can discuss and rework the script before putting it out there. Specifically, I wanted to work with Elaine because of her sense of humor, her whimsy, her ability to see things less literally than I tend to.
Elaine: I trust Matt’s approach to writing and the world, and I knew we’d come up with something audiences would enjoy.
How did you decide how to start?
Matt: The work really got underhand when Elaine came up with the idea of personifying the lake in an archetypal hero's journey. The big problem, from the outset, was how to contain and explain the hyperobject of a huge, interconnected imperiled ecosystem. We thought at first that we'd have many protagonists, but that's tough to do in 90 minutes. So it began to gel when we committed to this idea of GSL taking human form and fighting for herself in the city.
Elaine: We both like to nerd out on research, so we started there. Then we brainstormed ways to present the facts in a way that would entertain playgoers. At first we thought about doing a sort of variety show. Then we landed on a hero’s journey.
What do you most admire about each other's writing?
Matt: What I admire most about her process is how big-picture she's able to be, while I tend to get bogged down in micro-details. Especially when we were rewriting, she shooed me out of that habit, and I think it will help my future writing. In terms of product, I admire how much work she puts into her humor. She worked hard on the Angry Slam Poet's piece, and the Farmer's sonnet. I never touched them, or made many suggestions particular to them, because they were perfect. And I also like how Elaine will try big ideas even if she backs away from them later.
Elaine: Matt is both logical and lyrical, which is a great combination. And he’s funny.
What is the strength of your own writing?Matt: I think I know how to hold tension between characters, and I know when a line still needs polish. I occasionally overwrite, but I'm seldom closed off to cutting and simplifying.
Elaine: In general, I hope that I can bring humor and tenderness to whatever subject I’m writing about. And I like to tackle big topics.What preconception did you have about each other that has since been debunked, if any?
JUST ADD WATER by Matthew Ivan Bennett & Elaine Jarvik and EB & FLO by Elaine Jarvik are The Great Salt Lake Plays, part of Wake the Great Salt Lake, a temporary art project supported by Salt Lake City Arts Council, Salt Lake City Mayor's Office, and Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge.
TICKETS
JUST ADD WATER by Matthew Ivan Bennett & Elaine Jarvik receives its world premiere October 2-19 at Plan-B Theatre in the Studio Theatre at The Rose. Please click here for details and to purchase single tickets or subscribe.
BY ELAINE JARVIK
Elaine previously wrote Plan-B Theatre's fourth annual Free Elementary School Tour, RIVER.SWAMP.CAVE.MOUNTAIN., which explores how children navigate grief. Her previous full-length plays at Plan-B include MARRY CHRISTMAS, BASED ON A TRUE STORY, and AN EVENING WITH TWO AWFUL MEN. She has also had plays produced by Pygmalion Productions, Teatro Paraguas (Santa Fe, NM), Actors Theatre of Louisville (Humana Festival of New American Plays, Louisville, KY), and Salt Lake Acting Company, where her play SUNNY IN THE DARK will premiere in February 2026. Elaine is a former reporter for Deseret News.
When I moved to Utah from the East Coast decades ago, I was dismayed to discover that the body of water SaltLake City was named for looked nothing like the lakes I was used to. Where were the trees? Where were thecozy cottages? Instead, I was shocked by how bleak and alien it was—a barren vastness that made me feel small and exposed.
My first excursion out onto the lake itself (the in-laws had come to visit) was a “dinner cruise” plagued by swarms of brine flies; and in the years that followed, the lake periodically offered up what TV meteorologists call “lake stink,” a rotten-egg smell that wafted east, stuffed up my sinuses, and made me want to hide indoors. Mostly, though, the late was just a vague presence as I gazed west. I ignored it and went on with my life.
Then, slowly, I began to see Great Salt Lake with new eyes. I took a trip to the bird refuge with writer Terry Tempest Williams; I hiked on Antelope Island; I visited the Spiral Jetty, Robert Smithson’s iconic land art sculpture at Rozel Point on the lake’s north arm. Sure, I still preferred a cozy shore lined by greenery, but I found myself on these occasions less afraid of the emptiness and more aware of the beautiful solitude, the encircling horizon, the life hidden there.
And then came the devastating news that made me really see the lake for what it is: a sustainer of life for humans and other creatures, a vital part of our local and global ecosystem. Three years ago, lake scientists began to send out warnings that the Great Salt Lake was so low that its ecosystem might collapse, the victim of a megadrought, a growing population, and farming practices that diverted water that could be flowing to the lake. Arsenic dust in the exposed lakebed, we learned, threatened to sicken the people downwind. This last news, especially, was the alarm bell that wouldn’t stop ringing in my ears. Now the lake’s fate had become personal—because how could my grandchildren continue to live in a place that could kill them? Was the Salt Lake Valley doomed?
Writing EB & FLO has, again, helped me channel my worries, and has added another level of respect for a lakeI once disparaged. The challenge in writing a Great Salt Lake play for children is to make the informationexciting rather than pedantic. During my 30-year experience as a journalist—much of it doing long-form pieces—I learned how to not only research and distill data, but also to marry facts with narrative, presenting human stories that were at once both dispassionate and heartfelt. I have brought this sensibility to EB & FLO.
To keep the play engaging and dynamic, I settled on two main characters: a fantastic flamingo named Flo and a sensible seagull named Eb. Flo was inspired by the real-life adventures, 35 years ago, of a flamingo who escaped from Tracy Aviary and landed at Great Salt Lake, where he wintered for more than a decade and earned the name Pink Floyd. Like Floyd, Flo is a naïve stranger who arrives knowing next-to nothing about the lake. Eb is inspired by the garbage-eating gulls that are Utah’s state bird that have no business living in Utah butare omnipresent because of the lake! The two birds search for other flamingos, and along the way learn about brine shrimp, brine flies, and the endangered “bird highway;” they (and the audience) learn about decreasing water levels, increasing salinity, and the dust that could make people sick. The duo come up with a song to getthe message out.
One afternoon two summers ago, when my son was visiting from Portland, we drove out to Antelope Island, home to bison and to rocks that are at least two billion years old. We wanted to see for ourselves how the lakehad dramatically diminished in size since he had lived here as a boy. We parked the car at the top of a smallrise and began walking down toward the lake, first across rabbit brush, then across hardened sand, walking andwalking and walking. It seemed like we would never reach the water’s edge. What had before been abstract now became visceral: we were losing our lake and our way. It left me feeling even more scared.
For most of us in Utah, the lake has been easy to take for granted. Luckily, more and more people are payingattention because we can’t count on the weather to save us.
It’s my hope that, after seeing EB & FLO, students will have conversations with their grown-ups and will grow up trying to keep the lake alive.
This blog post also appears in the September 2025 issue of QSaltLake.
TICKETS
EB & FLO by Elaine Jarvik receives its world premiere September 2025-May 2026, serving K-3 students at 100 elementary schools statewide as our thirteenth annual Free Elementary School Tour. Please click here for details, booking information, and tickets to free public performances on Saturdays in October 2025 and February 2026.
BY JERRY RAPIER
Jerry Rapier begins his 25th season as Artistic Director of Plan-B Theatre and is the first person of color to lead a professional arts organization in Utah history. He has directed many productions for the company, including nine of thirteen Free Elementary School Tours! Jerry holds and MFA in Directing from University of Idaho, is a member of Stage Directors & Choreographers Society, and is a recipient of Salt Lake City's Mayor's Artist Award in the Performing Arts.
I grew up in rural New Mexico, 10 miles outside of a town of 700 people. My world was smaller than small, which probably explains my obsession with geography that began in fourth grade (1981, pre-internet).
That Christmas, one of our family gifts was a world atlas. I pored over it, memorizing each page. I couldn’t get enough of Japan (where my birth family is from), Peru (my mom lived there in fourth grade), and Great Salt Lake (dominating the western half of the U.S. map). To a fourth grader who had never been to Utah, it was Utah.
In 1986, our family vacationed in Salt Lake City, where planes bank over the southern end of Great Salt Lake as they take off and land. I knew nothing of this banking until it happened. I was speechless: the atlas hadn’t done the scale of the lake justice. I couldn’t see the northern shore. We ended up not visiting the lake, so I moped through the vacation until I could see it again on our return flight.
Eight years later I moved to Utah and visited the lake as soon as I could.
As I drove across the causeway from the southeast shore to Antelope Island for the first time, the road sliced through the lake, water lapping its shoulders on both sides. I hiked to the back of the island, a dead ringer for the Pacific coast of Mexico: an endless expanse of sea stretching to the horizon.
That first visit changed me.
Five years later, I was working part-time for The Nature Conservancy of Utah, steward of Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve. Early one Saturday morning, I waded those wetlands with the Preserve Manager. Lying on our bellies in the shallows, deep in the reeds, we carefully observed birds who’d taken a pit stop en route from Western Canada to Western South America to rest, refuel, and breed. I saw avocets and Wilson’s phalaropes and eared grebes at eye level.
On that visit the lake became my friend.
Years later, I wanted my son Oscar to remember his first visit to Great Salt Lake, so I waited until he was five. En route, I got him excited about slicing through the lake on the way to the 2018 Spider Festival on Antelope Island (millions of completely harmless Western Spotted Orb Weavers (think Charlotte’s Web) hatch at the lake each year (think bird food)). But the waterline was about 100 yards from the road on both sides. He was not impressed.
When we visited the next year, the waterline was more than a mile from the road. Oscar was convinced I’d fabricated the slicing and lapping. “Papa. How could that be true? The water is so far away it’s a mirage!”
During the 2020 pandemic lockdown, we drove out to Saltair (a now-defunct resort on the southern shore) and walked a mile from the parking lot to the waterline.
Another mirage.
“Papa, why did we have to walk so far to get to the water?”
We drove to the marina: dry dock.
“Papa, why are we standing where the boats should be?”
I realized, in that moment, that my climate grief was manifesting in my now six-year-old. I. Was. Shook. I asked myself, “How am I going to stop this?” And then, “This would make a great play.”
But, we already had four FEST commissions in the works so it receded to the back of my mind. Then, in December of 2023, Oscar and I heard a story on KUER on the way to school about how the dust from the exposed lakebed was a direct threat to the snowpack.
I texted Elaine Jarvik: “Would you be interested in writing another Free Elementary School Tour play?" (our 2017 FEST offering was her play for K-3 students, RIVER.SWAMP.CAVE.MOUNTAIN., about two elementary-age siblings trying to make sense of the death of their grandmother).
Thirty seconds later: "Yes! Do you have something specific in mind?"
Fifteen seconds later: "Great Salt Lake!”
Five seconds later: “Absolutely!”
So...why Elaine?
We Utahns live in a world where toddlers track toxic air and our namesake lake is an ecological time bomb. Regardless of political affiliation, most of us acknowledge our collective culpability in Great Salt Lake's demise: we see it with our eyes and feel it with our lungs.
Our climate grief is communal.
Although science tells us it’s not possible to restore Great Salt Lake to what it was 40 years ago, science also tells us that perpetual, adaptive management—lake speak for stemming loss—will ensure our terminal namesake doesn't fall prey to its terminal diagnosis.
Elaine has a gift for writing about grief: it’s as though empathy is embedded in her keyboard. Although she usually writes about navigating the impact of loss, she inverts that approach with EB & FLO, extending a hopeful, joy-filled invitation to K-3 students and their adults (and their adults!) to stem the loss of Great Salt Lake.
We are advocates of perpetual, adaptive management: we can't restore the lake to what it was, but we can preserve what it is.
But first we must truly become a we.
The key is lake literacy: the more each Utahn knows, the more the lake will be present in conversation and relationships. And relationships may be the only true agent for change.
Read more from Elaine Jarvik on creating EB & FLO.
TICKETS
EB & FLO by Elaine Jarvik receives its world premiere September 2025-May 2026, serving K-3 students at 100 elementary schools statewide as our thirteenth annual Free Elementary School Tour. Please click here for details, booking information, and tickets to free public performances on Saturdays in October 2025 and February 2026.
BY PEDRO FLORES
Pedro Flores has created roles in AFTERSHOCK, the Free Elementary School Tour of ALLI AND #3, and FULL COLOR at Plan-B Theatre. He last appeared at Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival in WITH YOU, which won Outstanding Ensemble in 2022. As a playwright, JUAN JOSE AND THE DEATHLY VATOS is his first produced play.
I originally came up with the idea for JUAN JOSE AND THE DEATHLY VATOS after I had just BOMBED an audition for a comedy show. I was venting about the experience to one of my best friends and realized I had a different monologue that would have worked better and could not believe I forgot to use it. It was a very funny monologue from Rick Najera's Latinologues called "East L.A. Baywatch" in which a chola plays a lifeguard at the community pool.
It was a combination of ideas that motivated me to say, "You know what? Fuck it! I'll write my own monologue and it'll be the funniest shit anyone has ever heard."
I began toying with an old idea/critique of J.K. Rowling's world of wizards. You see, I'm not a huge Harry Potter fan and one of the first things that I found hilariously ridiculous about this fantasy world was a particular Asian witch by the name of Cho Chang.
When I first saw the movies (I never read the books) as an adult, I believe I had to pause and ask, "Is her name really Cho Chang?" to which my girlfriend at the time answered, "Yes." To which I replied, "So the only Asian witch's name is Cho Chang??? I bet if J.K. Rowling wrote a Mexican wizard his name would have been Juan Jose!"
So I began to write myself a monologue based on these ideas. I only intended it to be a page long. Two pages max. But one turned into two and two into four and suddenly I found myself writing an entire play about a 'what-if" world of Harry Potter from the perspective of a Latino.
Juan Jose is an amalgamation of myself as a kid, my critiques of Harry Potter as an adult, and boosting my culture and background, combining them to create a ridiculous (yet hilarious) narrative.
This blog post also appears in the July 2025 issue of QSaltLake.
TICKET INFO
JUAN JOSE AND THE DEATHLY VATOS - written, directed, and performed by Pedro Flores, receives its world premiere July 24-August 3, 2025 as part of the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival. Please click here for details and tickets.
Ya'll, this show is definitely FFF (Full-Fledged Fringe).
BY LES ROKA
We are both thrilled and honored that a Plan-B Theatre production has been included on The Utah Review's year-end "Top 10 Moments of the Utah Enlightenment" every year since the list began in 2015.
Following is what was written by Les Roka about each production, all of which is excerpted from The Utah Review.
EMOTIONAL AND SPIRITUAL INTELLIGENCE: THE UTAH REVIEW'S TOP TEN MOMENTS OF THE UTAH ENLIGHTENMENT IN 2024 BY LES ROKA (DECEMBER 18, 2024)
Plan-B Theatre ontinues to be the paragon of a performing arts organization that fulfills the objective of the task surrounding ‘representation matters’ and how that is accomplished through quality work that is timely, elucidating and timeless. At the opening of Full Color, Plan-B Theatre's 34th season opener, the setting was pleasant and inviting: eight people enjoying each other’s company and feeling comfortable at home, outside a tent in nature. As each person shared a story, the production’s epiphany expanded organically, one narrative at a time. While the audience was welcomed to listen, the expectations for us in this ingeniously curated theatrical experience meant resisting the comfort of being passive or colorblind and acknowledging contemporary realities of systemic biases, discrimination and racism. In plain words, “One cannot fight what one does not see.”
Alex Smith in "Fox and the Mormons" by Chris Curlett, part of Full Color, directed by Jerry Rapier. Photo Credit: Sharah Meservy.
Full Color popped with heart, wit, poetry, intellectual depth and soul-bearing emotion. It was the third in the company’s Color Series Productions featuring work by members of Plan-B’s Theatre Artists of Color Writing Workshop. As noted in The Utah Review preview, the production comprised short first-person monologues by eight BIPOC playwrights who reflect on their experiences in Utah. However, instead of the playwrights performing the monologues they have written, the performances were entrusted to their own doppelgänger — actors who relate, identify and can sincerely testify to the gist of the experiences and the stories the playwrights put into their script. The short monologues were written by: Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin (Fried Chicken), Courtney Dilmore (Here), Tito Livas (Let’s Not), Tatiana Christian (I Still Have To Live Here), Darryl Stamp (American Survival Story), Iris Salazar (Life Is Color), Chris Curlett (Fox and the Mormons) and Bijan J. Hosseini (At Least One).
The actors excelled in their creative task, who compelled us to realize that if we do not see color in its fullness, we also fail to see how racism and discrimination continue in our neighborhoods, our schools and in our own lives. Each story stood on its own merit for its narrative impact but what made Full Color especially good were the finely woven threads that tied the entire package of eight monologues together. This was not just a compilation of eight anecdotes but a comprehensive, multilayered testimony to how widespread and far reaching the experiences of BIPOC Utahns occur in virtually every domain. The order of performance sharpened the connections among the eight monologues, particularly in the latter half of offerings that reinforced the point that such experiences are not anomalous or singular by any measure.
Courage, Creative Fire, Innovation, Enterprise: The Utah Review’s Top 10 Moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2023 by Les Roka (December 18, 2023)
Carleton Bluford in Fire! by Jenifer Nii, directed by Jerry Rapier. Photo Credit: Sharah Meservy.
Last spring, reprising a role that he performed 13 years ago, Carleton Bluford ripened with the wisdom of his personal and professional experiences, as he portrayed Wallace Thurman in Fire!, written by Jenifer Nii and directed by Jerry Rapier in a sensational production by Plan-B Theatre, Nii’s play is a theatrical tribute which significantly boosts public awareness of Thurman, who was raised and educated in Salt Lake City and, in his short life, quickly rose to major figure status in the Harlem Renaissance. Fire! premiered in 2010 along with a companion piece about Wallace Stegner written by Debora Threedy. Incidentally, Bluford’s play The Clean-Up Project, which Plan-B Theatre premiered, took honors as The Utah Review’s top moment of the Utah Enlightenment for 2022.
Throughout the 45-minute play, Bluford excelled in properly extruding the cadences and rhythms of Nii’s words. But, near the play’s end, there was one astonishing moment. At 32, Thurman knew his remaining days are numbered, as his health woes accumulate due to tuberculosis and alcoholism. Bluford said, “One day, if I keep faith, perhaps I too will learn what it is.” He subtly slowed the rhythm, as he spoke, “To make manifest my own clarion call. To open my mouth and sing the notes I have written, and know that they are beautiful.” By this point, Bluford pulled the cadence so that every remaining word would be heard: “And my friends, That. Will. Be…” In Fire!, Bluford’s deliberate efforts to extract the full preciousness of that moment was profound for several reasons. Also, it was Bluford’s nuances that underscored this production as a bittersweet celebration. In The Utah Review preview, the point emphasized was how Fire!, the first play by Nii that would be professionally produced, represented a perfect trinity for the playwright, the actor and the company.
Again, to quote from The Utah Review feature last April, with the exception of Fire!, there is no other formal tribute in Utah acknowledging Thurman’s pioneering path in the literary world. “With this 2010 play, Nii also blazed her own path. A former journalist, she would become the first Asian American playwright in Utah to have a work professionally produced. Her body of work expanded rapidly in diversity of genres and narrative treatments, garnering recognition from national organizations with award nominations and a grant, for example. But, Nii’s creative voice is now silenced, due to hippocampal atrophy, as noted previously.”
There were numerous stunning parallels that pop in the play. Nii and Thurman were both journalists in their professional lives. Lines that Nii wrote 13 years ago carried even greater dramatic impact that only a gifted actor who has fully absorbed the meaning of the character he portrayed as well as the bond of the playwright to the story of that character could interpret so powerfully. In fact, Nii said in 2010 and reiterated last year that she had always envisioned Bluford as the actor best suited to transmit the voice of Thurman on stage.
A New Twist to Annual List of Crowning Achievements: The Utah Review’s Top 10 Moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2022 by Les Roka (December 20, 2022)
Latoya Cameron in The Clean-Up Project by Carleton Bluford and directed by Jerry Rapier. Photo Credit: Sharah Meservy.
THE TOP MOMENT OF THE UTAH ENLIGHTENMENT IN 2022: The reverberating power of this final selection made it easy to establish a new tradition of naming a top Utah Enlightenment moment for the year. This will become the benchmark for future years.
In the world premiere of Carleton Bluford’s The Clean-Up Project, it was evident that another Plan-B Theatre production was having the usual very good opener. Bluford’s script, about a swift revolution that has transformed the country and flipped the power structure, is complex in its emotional sensations of a panic attack with the rhythm approximating that of a runaway train.
And, then there was the unsurpassed, unforgettable performance by Latoya Cameron as Jordan, who transformed the performance into that rare perfection of flow on stage. Momentarily, the throbbing heartbeat sounds in the stage design signaled a panic attack might occur but then Jordan responded. It glided on a gust of wind that scoured out the valley of all pretensions of civility and the social conventions of pleasing others for the sake of a status quo that always has been unhealthy.
Suddenly, everything in the performing space became like wallpaper. We were witnessing a full immersion in the dramatic text. Cameron’s performance was a fully fleshed convergence of every drop of blood, sweat, tears, fears, confidence, self identity, risks, faith, skepticism, disbelief, success, disappointment, hope and despair that has ever embodied the experience of Jordan and every Black woman. Even as she had yet to discover what her fate might be, Jordan could finally breathe without constrictions or restraint. Its rare strength was how it supported the rhythmic lifeblood of the narrative without sacrificing a beat.
Cameron’s performance as Jordan was that extraordinary phenomenon where an actor not only lives in the role but also has allowed the role to live fully through her. Every vestige of self-consciousness disappeared and the sense of time became distorted, which fortified the transcendental flow of the equally extraordinary narrative that occupied the entire space in the theater. For those of us attending and observing, the experience was at once humbling and mystifying as it was clarifying and piercing in its fully fleshed truths. It is these experiences which nourish and sustain our quest for empathy and genuine humanity. From that point, the remainder of the performance was perfect, unquestionably one of the most potent, emotionally impactful pieces of ensemble work I had seen on any local stage among the hundreds of performances I had written about in The Selective Echo and The Utah Review.
Lots of New Energy: The Top 10 Moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2021 by Les Roka (December 21, 2021)
The cast of Matthew Ivan Bennett’s Art & Class, directed by Jerry Rapier: Flo Bravo, Roger Dunbar, Stephanie Howell and Bijan Hosseini.
Last season, Plan-B Theatre premiered works by several Utah playwrights in audio-only productions. Among them was Matthew Ivan Bennett’s Art & Class, which was inspired in part by a 2017 incident at Lincoln Elementary School in Utah’s Cache County, which led to art teacher Mateo Rueda losing his job. Rueda came under fire when he showed his students reproductions of classic art works, some of which portrayed nude figures, that were pulled from The Art Box postcard collection in the school’s library.
As The Utah Review noted in April, in a long string of original productions written by Utah playwrights, Plan-B Theatre has scored many grand slams. Bennett’s plays are part of that impressive record. But, in Art & Class, extraordinary for many reasons, Plan-B set a new height of excellence. Bennett’s Art & Class stands with Eric Samuelsen’s Borderlands (2011), one of the company’s most successful productions and one of the greatest works of the Utah Enlightenment.
Bennett stands out for his facility as a playwright to synthesize the relevant problems and issues that truly matter in Utah but also impart timely lessons that extend well beyond the Land of Zion’s borders. In Art & Class, the emotional battles ultimately intersect and become intertwined between and among all four main characters, notably as issues of immigration, academic freedom, unintentional racism, self esteem, grief, social status, faith, suicide and addiction join art censorship and aesthetics in the play’s holistic canvas. Bennett wisely leaves the ending open, inviting listeners to discuss and suggest where the story goes after the 110-minute audio production has ended. The cast delivered an exceptional rendering in the audio production, even more remarkable given that, at no time, were the actors ever in the same location during recording: Flo Bravo (as Lucía, the teacher), Bijan Hosseini (Riley, as Lucía’s husband), Roger Dunbar (Leland Hess, as the school principal) and Stephanie Howell (Mindy Van Tassel, the parent who brings the matter to the school’s attention). Indeed, it is a play that should receive a fully staged production. Its dramatic punch is astounding.
Stress, Healing, Empowerment: The Top 10 Moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2020 by Les Roka (December 22, 2020)
April Fossen in The Audacity by Jenifer Nii, directed by Jerry Rapier. Photo Credit: Rick Pollock.
After all live performances came to a ground stop in March, Plan-B Theatre was the first local performing arts company to premiere a play via streaming of a video of a recorded performance. Nevertheless, in capping a season dedicated to original works by women Utah playwrights about women, The Audacity, written by Jenifer Nii, performed by April Fossen and directed by Jerry Rapier, rose as a pinnacle moment of rare distinction in the Utah Enlightenment. It was a vivid testament to Plan-B’s creative resilience at an unprecedented moment and in her single performance recorded for streaming, Fossen delivered spectacular results. Fossen’s performance was inspired as she portrayed the six characters in this solo work. The play captures an important part of Utah history with one of the characters being Josie Bassett, one of Utah’s most famous pioneer ranchers, and the resonance of her legacy in an intricately crafted story of real-life and fictional characters.
Fascinating, Innovative, Collaborative: Top Ten Moments of the Utah Enlightenment for 2019 by Les Roka
Erika Ovuoba, Carlos Nobleza Posas, Jillian Joy and Bryan Kido, "Driver’s License, Please" by Olivia Custodio, part of ... Of Color, directed by Jerry Rapier. Photo Credit: Rick Pollock.
Plan-B Theatre's efforts in inclusion and diversity establish an undeniable position as leader in the artistic community. Two of this year’s top 10 moments come from this extraordinary small theater company. The first comes from Olivia Custodio’s short play Driver’s License, Please, that premiered last season as part of …Of Color, featuring four short works by playwrights of color. A writer with natural comedic gifts, Custodio delivered the production’s most audacious, ribald moments, riffing handily off the classically unpleasant experience of renting a car, the setup for a scene as women get justice for the wholly obnoxious behavior of a chauvinist male. Likewise, her short play Bombastic Blue with three characters in an underground shelter after a nuclear bomb attack brought roars of laughter in late August at the 8th annual Rose Exposed! show.
The second moment from Plan-B comes from this season’s stupendous world premiere of Camille Washington's Oda Might. The play, with superb examples of subtle foreshadowing, commanded absolute attention from the audience. The simplest description is that Oda Might is about two black women sitting and chatting at a table in a therapy session at a mental health institution in New York City. But, listen closely. The session starts conventionally enough, reflecting the sensitive, careful research the playwright conducted to fortify the credibility of a superbly crafted narrative. There are subtle ripples throughout the play that shake our expectations about the characters—a brief moment of nonverbal frustration in reaction to a spoken line, eye contact or a raised eyebrow reacting to an unexpected utterance, the growing sense that a puzzle is nearly completed but still missing the most critical piece or two.
Flo Bravo, Yolanda Stange and Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin in Oda Might by Camille Washington. Photo Credit: Rick Pollock.
Washington’s Oda Might confronts and takes command over the consequences of sadly familiar, condescending displays of casually tolerant inclusionary rhetoric and stereotypes that have engendered more negative than positive impact. The characters negotiate the narrative through the frequent intersections of contemporary culture, entrenched racism and black womanhood.
It is important to reiterate a point The Utah Review made earlier this year about Plan-B’s …Of Color: “For a critic who sees the creation of art, in its broadest terms, as framing difficult questions that pull us out of our comfort zones, creative expression that is fearless in taking risks becomes the most meaningful to consider. In Utah, we put a premium on civility, politeness and gentility that tacitly signals restraint – and not just among conservatives but also many others of different sociopolitical stripes.
Audacious, Experimental, Unflinching: Top Ten Moments of the Utah Enlightenment for 2018 by Les Roka (December 21, 2018)
Austin Archer in Good Standing by Matthew Greene, directed by Jerry Rapier. Photo Credit: Rick Pollock.
There always is a compelling reason for why Plan-B Theatre appears on every Utah Enlightenment list. The company’s capacity for original productions written by playwrights with a strong Utah connection, as The Utah Review has described, “elevate the contemporary experience – with the sum of its tensions, problems, conflicts, disappointments and crises – to an enthralling sensation of healing and empowerment.”
In Good Standing, playwright Matthew Greene achieved a singular incisiveness about the church to which he once belonged and to his own lifelong contemplation about self-respect and conscience. Curt (played by Austin Archer) faced the 15 men who will decide if he should be excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because he married a man.
It is an astounding work for numerous reasons. It is a play for one actor. Archer took on 16 roles including the young man being excommunicated along with the members of the Mormon church’s high council and stake presidency. And, both Greene’s words and Archer’s seamless shifts from a specific character tone to another made the work immediately clear and accessible to its audiences. But, Good Standing’s greatest achievement is its aesthetic brilliance on raising questions at the heart of the Utah Enlightenment that few seem brave enough to contemplate publicly.
The Rededication of Spirit: Top 10 Moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2017 by Les Roka (December 20, 2017)
Christy Summerhays and Shane Rogers in Virtue by Tim Slover, directed by Jerry Rapier. Photo Credit: Rick Pollock.
Tim Slover’s Virtue was a riveting interpretation of an important transitional period in the life of St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) whose creative genius touched on music, theater, science, theology, medicine and mysticism. From a minimalistic set design that nevertheless imagined with great credible effect a 12th century religious site to the soundscape that quoted Hildegard’s music and an ensemble cast that produced tremendous onstage chemistry, Virtue successfully realized Slover’s enlightened (and, most notably, historically appropriate and accurate) rendition of Hildegard, as explained in a review published last spring. Notably, Slover’s play “parallels the modern crisis many contend with in trying to reconcile their own love and faith of spirituality with the relentless pain of obligation demanded vigorously by their respective confessional communities. It is one that certainly has confounded thousands upon thousands in Utah who wonder what spiritual price must be paid to secure the status quo of a church’s disjointed, distant leadership.”
The Top 10 of Many Fine Moments in 2016 for the Utah Enlightenment by Les Roka (December 21, 2016)
Jay Perry, Tracie Merrill, Carleton Bluford, April Fossen, Daniel Beecher and Roger Dunbar (foreground with guitar) in One Big Union by Debora Threedy, directed by Jason Bowcutt. Photo Credit: Rick Pollock.
Plan-B Theatre consistently produces work that nurtures the appropriate conscience of the Utah Enlightenment. This fall, One Big Union, written by Debora Threedy and directed by Jason Bowcutt, achieved effectively a creative adaptation of Joe Hill’s life that should appeal to theatrical companies across the country. Debuting immediately after the presidential election, it became apparent the play’s sociopolitical and sociocultural themes will resonate anywhere. Threedy’s play synthesizes the egregious errors of Hill’s trial on murder charges and the seminal legacy of protest songs that inspired a new way of propagating the labor movement’s political punch.
However, even as the legal travesties of Hill’s story make good material for theater,
Threedy’s play reminded of the power of the protest song that animated the growth of unions – especially the Wobblies phenomenon during Hill’s life and certainly after his death. Unions no longer enjoy the political power or impact they once had but they have survived and there may be a resurgence in the next few years amidst an unprecedentedly chaotic, disturbing and dire political environment. One Big Union poses penetrating questions that are more relevant than ever in today’s sociopolitical scene.
Courageous Artistic Expression Underscores Memorable Moments of Utah Enlightenment in 2015 by Les Roka (December 22, 2015)
Latoya Cameron and Carleton Bluford in A/Version of Events by Matthew Ivan Bennett, directed by Christy Summerhays. Photo Credit: Rick Pollock.
Plan-B Theatre, now in the midst of its silver anniversary season, is hitting all of its strides in original productions, such as Melissa Leilani Larson’s Pilot Program, an exceptionally nuanced statement on Mormonism and the complex relationship with polygamy. Matthew Ivan Bennett’s growth as a playwright, in particular, has been a marvelous phenomenon to witness. For the Radio Hour series, produced in conjunction with KUER-FM’s RadioWest, Bennett wrote Otherwhere, a hugely successful experiment in programming. Crafted with the utmost attention to persuade listeners – almost up until the climactic moments of the story – that RadioWest host Doug Fabrizio’s interview with Dr. Arlen Childs (executed brilliantly by actor Jay Perry) was real, the episode paid handsome homage to the famous 1938 radio broadcast of Orson Welles’ production of The War of The Worlds.
Last winter, Bennett’s play A/Version of Events became an outstanding addition to the growing canon of Utah Enlightenment works. It achieves precisely what Marina Abramović explains: “Our society is in a mess of losing its spiritual center… Artists should be the oxygen of society. The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, to open consciousness and elevate the mind.”
Two characters are presented in the play: a married Mormon couple in their middle 30s, who are heading through Pennsylvania on their way to Hershey’s Chocolate World. However, this trip represents a significant purpose for a couple wondering if their marriage can survive and heal after the death of their son, Braeden, who was born with severe disabilities and had drowned in an accident.
Making Bennett’s play even more extraordinary were the searing performances of Carleton Bluford and Latoya Cameron. In the play, we learn it’s okay to accept grief’s messy, complex process that does not have to become an exercise of navigating neatly defined stages. By the play’s end, we recognize it is grief’s messiness which makes us most uncomfortable, almost to the point of being blinded, for example, to the still important ‘come weal, come woe’ proposition of marriage. So convincing was the performance that one could believe Bluford and Cameron are the actual married couple, down to body language and facial expressions. One of the most powerful depictions in every sense, the play set a new hallmark in Plan-B Theatre’s distinguished record of bringing courageous new works to the stage.
BY JANINE SOBECK KNIGHTON
An award-winning, nationally-produced dramaturg, playwright, screenwriter, story consultant, and educator originally from Central California, Janine is currently the Associate Professor of Playwriting and Dramaturgy at Utah Valley University and a member of The Lab at Plan-B Theatre. She makes her Plan-B debut with THE BEATRIX POTTER DEFENSE SOCIETY.
I’ve long been interested in exploring the story of Beatrix Potter. The more I dug into her history - the severe isolation she lived in as a child, the way she connected with nature and animals, and the way she broke against barriers for women, first as a children’s author and later as a conservationist and defender of the Lake District - the more intrigued I became. I kept circling around this moment in 1882, the first time that she stayed in the land that would become her eventual home. She was only 16 and I knew in my gut that this moment helped define her as a person, as a writer, as an artist, and as an activist. I wanted to explore this younger Beatrix - before she became the Beatrix Potter we all know. But it wasn’t until I discovered Edith Rawnsley that the story clicked into place.
Much is written about how the vicar Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsely both encouraged Beatrix in pursuing publication of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" and collaborated with her years later in saving The Lake District from commercial development. In reading about Hardwicke's marriage to Edith, I stumbled across a line that stated, “Everything that Hardwicke and Edith did they did as a couple.” And yet, as is too often the case, only his activities were recorded. I kept asking myself, "How is it that a husband and wife could do everything together and yet the wife is rarely mentioned?"
With that question, I found the story I wanted to tell.
It's a pivotal moment in Beatrix’s life, when she is struggling to know herself and imagine the possibilities of her future. I knew I wanted to bring Edith's story back into the light. From the scant information available, I knew that she was also a watercolorist. Who better to understand a young artist struggling with her place in the world?
TICKETS
THE BEATRIX POTTER DEFENSE SOCIETY by Janine Sobeck Knighton receives its world premiere March 27-April 13, 2025 in the Studio Theatre at The Rose. Please click here for details and tickets.
BY AARON ASANO SWENSON
Aaron is a yonsei (fourth-generation) Japanese American theatre artist based in Salt Lake City.
KILO-WAT is Aaron’s first outing with Plan-B as a playwright, and he is deeply grateful for the opportunity to bring Wat Misaka’s story to the stage.
Since 2003, Aaron has worked with Plan-B on over two dozen projects, performing in three productions of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH and designing costumes for THE EDIBLE COMPLEX, ONE BIG UNION, MESTIZA, or MIXED, the FIRE! revival, and BALTHAZAR, among others.
As a designer/illustrator, Aaron has created seven seasons of show art/graphics for Plan-B, as well as illustrations for Obāchan Told Me Gaman: A Child's View of Topaz, a children’s book which Plan-B published and provided for free to every elementary school in Utah.
I am not a basketball guy.
What I mean by this is, I’m five-eight on a good day. The part of my brain responsible for hand-eye coordination didn’t grow in until eighth grade, at which point I used it solely for evil (read: musical theatre). I’m not a sports fan in general, which means I’m definitely not a University of Utah basketball fan. This is not to say that I’m anti-basketball, unlike my partner Nathan. Nathan is a six-foot-three-inch, corn-fed specimen from an undisclosed location in the American Midwest, who converted me to professional baseball through the simple act of taking me to a live game. When I asked him his feelings on basketball, he shrugged; when I asked if he’d ever been to a live game, he winced. “I understand why people like it, but the sneakers on the hardwood floor, with the sweat…it’s too squeaky. It’s a very squeaky game.”
We are not a basketball household.
So when Jerry [Rapier, Plan-B's Artistic Director] approached me about writing a play based on the life of Wat Misaka, my first question was “who?”
Once Jerry laid out the basic facts for me, I was sold on the story. How could I not be? By the age of 25, Wat Misaka had led the University of Utah men’s basketball team to two national championships before being drafted by the New York Knickerbockers, making him the first Asian American—in fact, the first person of color—in the NBA. Even though the Knicks let him go after only three months, he was offered a position on the Harlem Globetrotters, which he turned down so he could finish his engineering degree. And all of this happened between 1943 and 1947, when anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States was at an all-time high.
By the end of our meeting, I knew the following: the play would be performed by one actor [Bryan Kido], it needed to be about 45 minutes long, and I couldn’t interview the subject of the play since Wat Misaka passed away in 2019. After several months, I knew a lot more about Wataru Misaka, his life, his accomplishments, and his tour of duty as a military intelligence officer during World War II. But I still didn’t know how I was going to tell his story.
I tried a few different approaches in a few different ways. The dividing line between myth and legend is vanishingly small for sports heroes in the U.S., so I thought about the story as if it were a traditional Japanese folktale. I tried writing it as a live recording of a sports podcast. I’m a fiend for trivia, so I played with the idea of framing it all as a pub quiz-style game. I even tried a few passes as a first-person monologue, which I had determined not to do at the outset—I didn’t know how to be sure what he might say. None of these approaches felt like the right fit. I liked little bits of each, but not enough of one.
In the end, it was that trivia helped me find my way—not surprising, since trivia may be one of the few places where the interests of “sports people” and “theatre people” overlap.
Before I continue, I’d like to acknowledge that I’m oversimplifying some extremely complex scientific processes in the interest of constructing a convenient metaphor. In my defense, A. I’m sorry, and B. I really wanted to do it.
You've probably heard that lightning takes the path of least resistance. And that's not exactly wrong, but it’s not exactly right, either. It might be more accurate to call it “the path of best connection.” When a cloud has enough charge for lightning to form, it sends out tendrils called “stepped leaders.” They reach out in every direction, about a hundred and fifty feet at a time, at about 200,000 miles an hour. Each leader is basically testing a different route until one connects with the earth. When it does, a massive stream of opposite charge races back up along that connection to the cloud where it started, in a burst of light. This power surge, called the “return stroke,” is what we think of as lightning. Not the process—the build-up, the exploring, the moment of connection. Just the part we see: this colossal, incandescent bridge between heaven and earth that moves so quickly our eyes can’t tell what just happened.
Connection defines us. Even when I’m the only one credited for part of a project, I’m not working alone. I can’t throw together a convincing color commentary for a sporting event. I can’t construct a garment from scratch. I can’t create a documentary film about Wat Misaka containing primary source interviews from experts in multiple fields, friends and family, and the man himself. I do the things I know how to do. I ask the questions I know how to ask. I use the resources I'm able to find; then I tell you what I found, how I experienced it and what it meant to me. For nearly everything else, I look to the absurdly gifted people around me for guidance and inspiration.
My maternal grandparents, Hideyuki “Harry” Arita and Gail Kimiko Minamoto, were both born in the United States to immigrant parents. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the U.S. Army to remove Japanese Americans from “military areas,” which included the entire west coast. This forced relocation applied to both “issei”—“first-generation” immigrants born in Japan—and their American-born, “second-generation” children, or “nisei.” Harry and Gail met briefly before their imprisonment, and they continued their courtship through letters. My grandfather was released early from the Minidoka incarceration camp to a job in Northern Utah, and my grandmother joined him a few months later. They were married in Brigham City in 1946 and lived there briefly before relocating to California. None of the letters survived. We have no records of how they spent that time, or where. But Wat Misaka spent Christmas of 1946 with his family in Ogden, and the U’s victory at the NIT championship happened in March of 1947. Even if my grandparents never met Wat Misaka in person, they must have known who he was. Unfortunately, I’ll never know for sure.
My mother heard very little from her parents about their experiences during and immediately after the war. There are things we'll never know, and that's OK. In a lot of cases, it's a blessing. The more you know, the more you carry. This is the cost of memories, of legacy. Parts of the story might change or soften with time, but I can't begrudge anybody for wanting to set something down after carrying it for decades, or finding a gentler way to carry it so the weight doesn't injure or kill them.
In the decades since my grandparents passed away, I have come up with dozens of questions I wish I could ask. I missed my opportunity, but there are other things I didn’t try, and I wish I had before I finished writing this piece. There were people that I could’ve talked to, who would’ve been able to pick up the phone when I called, who could’ve given me answers that illuminated things I couldn’t see, things I didn’t even know I was looking for. I didn’t think I could handle asking questions of people who really knew the answers. There were some answers I wasn’t sure I could bear. There are questions that will haunt us no matter who we are, that linger like radiation, invisible and slowly fading, damaging us on scales that we might not see or comprehend, unspooling our DNA and changing the parts of us that tell us how to be ourselves.
I will never meet Vadal Peterson, who was the head coach when Wat Misaka played for the University of Utah. Nonetheless, he taught me something important through the training he assigned to Wat and the rest of the team. The success of the University of Utah men’s basketball team was never just about strategy—it was about conditioning and teamwork. It was about preparing their bodies and their minds for unforeseen challenges. It was about trusting the work, and it was about trusting your teammates. We all live on to one extent or another through the recollections of others after we die. Much has been said about this by people more eloquent than I. But it’s equally important to remember that the same people carry us with them while we are still alive. It is so easy for us to lose ourselves in this world and its stories. When we forget who we are, they can remind us.
After lightning strikes, when the afterimage fades, we can only retell what's been recorded. There's no substitute for connection. You tell yourself you’ll get around to it until one day you can't, because one of you isn’t around anymore. The dead don't hold still for us. That was a mistake I made in my own life as well as in writing this show. Once someone passes away, it’s easy to assume that you can take your time making your peace, filling in the remaining gaps. But the dead don't hold still. The distance between us and those who are gone keeps changing, because we are constantly in motion. Our mutual orbits are distorted by the gravity of newer, larger things.
To tell this story, I had to tell my own—how I found my connection with Wat Misaka, and how he reconnected me with my own family. I can’t interview Wat Misaka. I can’t ask my grandparents to fill in any blanks. But there are still a few people I can talk to about them, who remember them as “Gail” and “Harry,” and not “Grandma and Grandpa Arita.” They can add color and detail to the versions of my grandparents that still live in my head and heart. That’s the miracle of community and communal storytelling. Even if I’ll never speak to them again in this life, I can still get to know them a little better because of the connections that still exist between us. There is still time for lightning to strike—to connect us across time and space, to illuminate our surroundings and the path ahead, if only for a short while.
Study Guide (coming soon)
TICKETS
Public performances of the world premiere of KILO-WAT by Aaron Asano Swenson are February 14-16, 2025 in a Plan-B Theatre/UtahPresents co-production as part of the Stage Door Series at Kingsbury Hall (not at Plan-B's regular home at The Rose). Please click here for details and tickets.
KILO-WAT also offers four free student previews February 11-13, 2025 for students in grades 7-12 and a free high school tour February 18-21, 2025 to Davinci Academy in Ogden, City Academy in Salt Lake City, and Utah Arts Academy in St. George, all as part of our A Week With A Play program.
BY YOLANDA STANGE
Yolanda's Plan-B Theatre credits include the world premieres of ODA MIGHT, ...OF COLOR, AFTERSHOCK, LOCAL COLOR, and, most recently, BITTER LEMON. A 2024 recipient of Salt Lake City’s Mayor’s Artist Award in the Performing Arts, Yolanda also appears regularly at Salt Lake Acting Company and in many a Hallmark movie.
When Jerry [Rapier, Plan-B's Artistic Director] told me I was the only actor that had been a part of 'Of Color' since its inception, it made me think of what we had to do to make it happen.
First, a meeting was put together [in 2017] where we could air our grievances. The fear was real and the anger was palpable. We even had a gate-crasher try to get in. But I kept my eye on Jerry. He listened, he empathized, he committed to change.
Though the night felt good being able to get things off my chest, I worried if I would ever work again.
But then I heard about the Theatre Artists of Color Writing Workshop where POCs were working on THEIR stories. I was like, "OK now. Go ahead, Plan-B."
The rumor mill was loud so I was aware of some folks who did not like that this was going on, but it didn't stop Plan-B. Before I knew I was cast in the first show [...OF COLOR, 2019], and the 2nd [LOCAL COLOR, 2021], and now the 3rd [FULL COLOR, 2024].
I have watched actors and writers grow from rushing to get the words out because this might be the one and only time they can, to relaxing and realizing "Of Color' is here and, as long as the audience keeps coming, it's here to stay.
The biggest and most important thing I've learned being a part of this series is that people DO change. With patience, people can learn new ways of being. I am so grateful for the actors, writers, production staff, stage managers, Cheryl [Managing Director & Resident Sound Designer], Jerry, and the Plan-B board for their bravery and commitment to hear ALL the different voices that make up this place we ALL call home.
FULL COLOR is the third installment of our Color Series. …OF COLOR (2019) and LOCAL COLOR (2021) featured fictional characters in fictional worlds, influenced by the playwrights’ personal experience. In FULL COLOR, each playwright writes in first person, combining writing acumen with personal experience.
TICKETS
FULL COLOR receives its world premiere October 24-November 10 at Plan-B Theatre. Please click here for details and tickets.