Marc Edward Shaw - Singing and Dancing to The Book of Mormon: Critical Essays on the Broadway Musical

Singing and Dancing to
The Book of Mormon

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Shaw, Marc E. editor. | Welker, Holly editor.

Title: Singing and dancing to the Book of Mormon : critical essays on the Broadway musical / edited by Marc Edward Shaw, Holly Welker.

Description: Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015048691 (print) | LCCN 2015051237 (ebook) | ISBN 9781442266766 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781442266773 (electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: Parker, Trey, 1969 Book of Mormon.

Classification: LCC ML410.P165 S56 2016 (print) | LCC ML410.P165 (ebook) | DDC 782.1dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015048691

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

To the elders, sisters, members, and investigators

we knew as missionaries.

Gracias and xie xie!

Marc Edward Shaw: I want to thank my coeditor. Also thanks to my colleagues in the Hartwick College Theatre Arts program (Gary Burlew, Ken Golden, and Malissa Kano-White). Thanks to the Hartwick College Office of Academic Affairs and the Arkell Hall Foundation. Thanks to Catherine M. Cole for her assistance. And thanks and love to my family.

Holly Welker: Thanks to Carol Hamer, Lynn Matthews Anderson, Joan Marcus, and Kevin Barnwell for feedback on my chapter. Thanks to family and friends who provided material and emotional support during the preparation of this manuscript. Thanks to my coeditor for everything.

We want to thank the Sunstone Education Foundation and Mary Ellen Robertson, Sunstones director of symposia at the time, for letting us participate on a panel about The Book of Mormon musical at its 2011 symposium, which is where the idea for this book was born. A few of the insights developed in the introduction, in Shaws chapter, and in Welkers chapter were first presented there, albeit in very different form. And thanks to all of our contributors, who helped us do something incredible!

Holly Welker and Marc Edward Shaw

How Understanding The Book of Mormon
Makes the Peculiar Possible

The Book of Mormon was written for you. If you dont think thats true, check its title page, which declares that it is written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile, and that covers pretty much everyone. Furthermore, the Book of Mormon tells you how to read it: Nephi, the works second prophet and first contributor, knows it is his job to liken all scriptures unto us, that it might be for our profit and learning and tells his readers to hear ye the words of the prophet, which were written unto all the house of Israel, and liken them unto yourselves, that ye may have hope as well as your brethren from whom ye have been broken off; for after this manner has the prophet written (1 Nephi 19:2324).

If youre reading this book, theres a good chance that The Book of Mormon musical was written for you as well: an educated English speaker willing and able to spring for a ticket to a Broadway musical and interested enough to pick up a book about said musical later. The musical also supplies its own hermeneutic: Prophets always speak in metaphor. Of course, that raises the question: are Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Robert Lopez, the musicals creators, prophets? As Marc Edward Shaw notes in Negative Capability in The Book of Mormon Musical,

We choose to write about The Book of Mormon musical because it moved us, two scholars of literature and lovers of story who had served missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It certainly felt like a revelation to sit in the Eugene ONeill Theater on Broadway in early 2011 and see missionaries not merely taken seriously but celebratednot by the people who send the missionaries forth, but by the people the missionaries hope to teach. And like the authors of the Book of Mormon and The Book of Mormon, we want to tell you how to read the work weve createdor at least how not to read it: this isnt scripture; the essays collected here are definitely not holy pronouncements no one may question or add to. We freely admit to taking the holy word and adding fictionmattersto theater, to writers, to Mormons, to scholars of religion, to Africansor not. Its waiting for you to write in the margins and use it as the basis for your own critiqueor your own missionary story or your own love letter to something youre outside of or your own musical.

Wallace Stegner, a novelist, historian, and non-Mormon who wrote frequently about Mormons, made a statement that is quoted in almost every survey of Mormon fiction: It is almost impossible to write fiction about the Mormons, for the reason that Mormon institutions and Mormon society are so peculiar that they call for constant explanation. Believe it or not, people can get irritated when you dont fit their preconceptions, and theyre not always interested in explanations about how those preconceptions are wrong.

Somehow, Parker, Stone, and Lopez not only did the almost impossible, they did it welland without all the explanations Stegner considered indispensable. Parker, Stone, and Lopez never explain, for instance, why teenage LDS boys are addressed as elder, a title denoting old age and maturity. (Its because elder is the first office in the Melchizedek priesthood, and men may be ordained to it at age eighteen.) They never explain about the temple garment, underwear worn by adult Mormons to remind them of the covenants they make in the templethey simply have Elders Price and Cunningham strip down to their underwear before going to bed. They never explain that all prospective missionaries get a call, a letter notifying them where theyll serve and when they need to report to the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, Utahnor is their depiction of how missionaries find out where theyll serve the least bit close to what really happens. OK, theyre not perfectthe musical includes mistakes, both minor and major, in its portrayal of Mormons. As Holly Welker underscores in The Book of Nabulungi; Stand Next to Him and Watch (Or, Mostly Him), one of the largest is the erasure of Mormon women from missionary work.

Like the warning given to Elder Cunningham, we want to clear our throats and sing out: Youre making things up again, Parker/Stone/Lopez. But we understand! Sometimes writers get things wrong because their research never revealed how their assumptions might be wrongand sometimes they get things