2009
AML Award:
Drama
Presented to:
Melissa Leilani Larson
For:
Little Happy Secrets
In those dark and dangerous spaces where the political and personal collide, some works seem to flail around helplessly in the dark, as though the sheer heat of exertion might lead to illumination. Others prefer, in modesty and humor and affection, to simply light a candle. Such a work is Melissa Leilani Larson's play Little Happy Secrets, particularly as seen in a marvelous production last year by the New Play Project in Provo. A young woman finds herself romantically obsessed with her dearest friend and roommate. She worries that revealing the truth will end the friendship--she also can't stop herself, and the friendship is nearly destroyed. Is her culture thereby condemned? No, Larson has written a play, not a polemic. If anything, the play is a celebration, of a culture rooted in compassion, of a plan that requires heartbreak and loss and pain. A celebration of heartbreak. Larson writes dialogue with a directness and simple eloquence, in which the characters move from conversations with each other to a larger conversation with the audience and, through us, with Mormonism itself. How can we love, how can we persist in loving, knowing our hearts will be broken, our spirits made contrite? The Association for Mormon Letters is proud to be able to honor Melissa Leilani Larson for Little Happy Secrets.
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