BYU Vocal Point’s “The Greatest Showman A Cappella Mashup” won two of the major awards in the 2018/19 Contemporary A Cappella Society Video Awards: Best Showtunes/Soundtrack/Theme Song; Outstanding Choreography/Staging. The CASA Awards are widely considered the Oscars of the A Cappella world. The video currently has over 4.1 million views. Filmed at BYU Broadcasting, the video also featured the Cougarettes, Dunk Team and Aeris Aerial Arts. Many media arts, TMA design students and alums also participated behind the scenes. The video was directed by Jeff Parkin, and co-produced by Jeff and Jared Cardon.
See the video below:
The 18th Annual LDS Film Festival will take place this week at the Orem SCERA Center for the Arts, February 27- March 2. Many of our students and alums will attend and be represented at the festival. Some of those include the following, with our student and alums’ names in bold.
Feature Films
- Jane and Emma, directed by Chantelle Squires; written by Melissa Leilani Larsen
- Little Women, directed by Clare Niederpruem; produced by McClain Nelson, Kristi Shimek, Stephen Shimek, and David Wulf
Filmmaker Presenters
- Garrett Batty, who will present about his latest film, Out of Liberty
- William McAllister, who will present films from East Hollywood High
Short Documentaries Competition
- “In the Year of the Dog,” directed by Peter Totten
- “Londoner Stories: Cristiano Baiamonte,” directed by Lorenzo Hubbert (current SFA president)
Short Film Competition
- “Passenger Seat,” directed by Jeffrey Hein
- “Gather,” directed by Howie Burbidge
- “To Have and to Hold,” directed by Colton Elzey
- “Anna,” directed by William Knowles, Jr.
This week will be the premiere of BYU’s Contemporary Voices Play Festival. Performances will be script-in-hand readings that include the following plays, Margaret Edson’s “Wit” directed by Megan Sanborn Jones, John Patrick Shanley’s “Company” co-directed by Jennifer Reed and David Morgan, and Stephen Sondheim’s “Doubt: A Parable” directed by Julia Ashworth. The debut of this festival is hopefully the beginning of a new tradition at BYU. Jones shared the following about why the festival is so important to students’ play literacy, “We’re starting the festival to introduce our students to curriculum that they read in classes, but have not made it onto our main stage seasons for a variety of reasons — the limited season we can fully produce, casting concerns, special requirements of the script or challenging topics. We want our students to see and hear these plays more than just read them, so this provides an opportunity to support curriculum, provide roles for students and give our faculty the ability to work one-on-one with and really mentor students.” For more information about Contemporary Voices, including for access to tickets and show times, click here.
After a sold out run in the Nelke, BYU Young Company’s production of Comedy of Errors, directed by Kris Jennings in a beach movie style, is now touring local elementary schools until the end of the semester. If you missed the production during its on-campus performances, the company will be performing twice more for the general public at the Orem and Provo libraries on Monday, March 25 (7 pm at the Orem Library, 58 North State Street), and Monday, April 1 (7 pm at the Provo Library, 550 N. University Ave.).
Comedy of Errors
Alumni News
The Association for Mormon Letters (AML) will present TMA alum Melissa Leilani Larson with the Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters on the evening of March 30, at the AML Conference, held in Berkeley, California. According to AML’s website, “there will be a special panel that evening to honor Melissa. Also, that weekend there will be a screening of Jane & Emma, the recent feature film for which Melissa was the screenwriter.” For more information about the award and about Melissa, go to http://associationmormonletters.org/blog/2019/02/melissa-leilani-larson-smith-pettit-foundation-award/
The Sound and the Fury 