The Utah Review’s ‘Top 10 Moments of the Utah Enlightenment’ (2015-Present)

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.

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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.”

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.

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Courage, Creative Fire, Innovation, Enterprise: The Utah Review’s Top 10 Moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2023 by Les Roka (December 18, 2023)

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.

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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)

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.

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Lots of New Energy: The Top 10 Moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2021 by Les Roka (December 21, 2021)

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.

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Stress, Healing, Empowerment: The Top 10 Moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2020 by Les Roka (December 22, 2020)

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.

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Fascinating, Innovative, Collaborative: Top Ten Moments of the Utah Enlightenment for 2019 by Les Roka

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.

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.

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Audacious, Experimental, Unflinching: Top Ten Moments of the Utah Enlightenment for 2018 by Les Roka (December 21, 2018)

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.

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The Rededication of Spirit: Top 10 Moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2017 by Les Roka (December 20, 2017)

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.”

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The Top 10 of Many Fine Moments in 2016 for the Utah Enlightenment by Les Roka (December 21, 2016)

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.

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Courageous Artistic Expression Underscores Memorable Moments of Utah Enlightenment in 2015 by Les Roka (December 22, 2015)

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.