Melissa Leilani Larson: Mormon Playwright
Melissa Leilani Larson is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Larson was raised in Hau‘ula, Hawai‘i. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Brigham Young University and her master’s of fine arts from The Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Throughout college, she wrote novels, but when she saw a poster for a playwriting contest, she decided to enter it and later took a playwriting class.
Her plays include The Church of St. Pinky at Katy, Texas; A Flickering, Lady in Waiting; Little Happy Secrets (which won the 2009 Association for Mormon Letters Drama award and is included in the anthology Out of the Mount: 19 from New Play Project); Martyrs’ Crossing (which won the IRAM award for Best New Play and is included in the anthology Saints on Stage); Persuasion (adapted from the Jane Austen novel); Pride and Prejudice (adapted from the Jane Austen novel and commissioned by BYU); Standing Still Standing (winner of the 2002 Vera Hinckley Mayhew award, AML honorable mention in drama, and winner of the LDS Film Festival Screenwriting contest for 2006 the screen adaptation); and Pilot Program. Many of her plays have been and are being staged in many other places.
She adapted George Eliot’s novel Silas Marner for a musical called The Weaver of Raveloe. She wrote the screenplay for Freetown, a film that will be in theaters in April 2015. She wrote and produced The Lilac Thief, an independent feature. She has several short films to her credit, including “Cherry Pie” (writer), “4:53” (writer), “Iscariot” (writer and co-producer), and “Traces” (writer and producer). She also debuted as a director in 2014 with Into the Woods in Provo, Utah.
She is an Actor’s Equity Association Equity Membership Candidate stage manager and has managed for BYU, Utah Regional Ballet, Provo Theatre Company, Sundance Summer Theatre, Utah Lyric Opera, to name a few. She is also a certified Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival adjudicator and occasionally teaches at BYU and Utah Valley University.
