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Plays and Musicals for All Audiences and Theatre Groups, Amateur, Educational, Professional, and Religious

Thomas F. Rogers • Author

Thomas F. Rogers • Author

Thomas F. Rogers — A former director of the BYU Honors Program, Thomas F. Rogers is professor emeritus of Russian language and literature at Brigham Young University and the author of 29 plays, many on Mormon subjects. Four of these have been published in God’s Fools (Signature Books, 1983), which also received the Association of Mormon Letters Drama Prize that same year: HUEBENER (the first literary treatment of its subject), FIRE IN THE BONES (again, the first literary treatment of its subject, the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre), GOD’S FOOLS (or JOURNEY TO GOLGOTHA) and REUNION. Other titles include: The SECOND PRIEST, The ANOINTED (an Old Testament narrative with music by C. Michael Perry) and The SEAGULL (translated and adapted from the Chekov play). In 1992, GENTLE BARBARIAN, FRERE LAWRENCE and CHARADES were published in a second anthology entitled ‘Huebener’ and Other Plays by Thomas F. Rogers. Rogers has also penned stage adaptations of Dostoevsky’s novels CRIME AND PUNISHMENT and THE IDIOT, an opera libretto based on Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER, a translation of Georg Buechner’s WOYCZEK (produced at BYU), and scripts based on novels by local authors, Phillip Flammer and Ben Parkinson. The first of these received a BYU production, directed by Tad Danielewski, in which Rogers played the role of Marmeladov.
In 1995–1996 GOD’S FOOLS was produced (in translation) by a professional repertory theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, where Rogers was then serving as an LDS mission president. He also played the role of the American double spy Cooper in that production.  During that mission he directed LDS Church members in a stage adaptation of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and a Russian language version of HUEBENER. The play has also since been produced in Finland in the Finnish language, while a German translation still awaits forthcoming performances in that language. Tom has spent a considerable number of years residing in both Russia and other Eastern European countries. This includes two memorable long visits to Poland (whose language he had studied in graduate school), during one of which, with other American theatre specialists, he attended workshops sponsored by the U.S. based Kosciusko Foundation in Krakow, Warsaw and Wroclaw.
At BYU and in Provo, Utah, Rogers directed the premiere productions of Robert Vincek’s For the Lions to Win, Thom Duncan’s Matters of the Heart and Eric Samuselsen’s Accommodations and in Bountiful, Utah, a production of HUEBENER.  Besides numerous productions in both Russian and German for the BYU Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages, he has directed Chekhov’s The Three Sisters (in German) for Deutsches Teater Salt Lake City, where he also performed as an actor, and Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, Pirandello’s It Is So If You Think So and Pinter’s The Caretaker for the BYU Department of Theatre.
Cited by Eugene England as “undoubtedly the father of modern Mormon drama,” Rogers received the Mormon Arts Festival’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 1998 and in 2002 a Lifetime Service Award from the Association of Mormon Letters. His published stories have appeared in volume 2, no. 2 of Sunstone, the Summer 1991 and Winter 2001 issues of Dialogue (receiving an annual Dialogue fiction award) and in the collections Christmas for the World (SLC: Aspen Books, 1991) and The Gifts of Christmas (SLC: Deseret Book Co., 1999). Rogers has served as editor of Encyclia, journal of the Utah Academy, and authored two critical monographs: ‘Superfluous Men’ and the Post-Stalin’thaw’ (The Hague: Mouton, 1972) and Myth and Symbol in Soviet Fiction (San Francisco & New York: The Edwin Mellen Research University Press, 1992).
Rogers studied at the Yale School of Drama and holds degrees from the University of Utah, Yale, and Georgetown. He has also studied theatre in Poland and Russian at Moscow State University and taught at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and the University of Utah. He has intensively studied some ten languages and had extensive residences in Russia, Eastern Europe, Germany, Austria, Sweden, the Baltic states, Armenia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, India, China and the Middle East. He and his wife Merriam taught English at Peking U in Beijing for an academic year, are the parents of seven children, forty grandchildren and, so far, fifteen great grandchildren, with more on the way. They reside in Bountiful, Utah.

Thomas F. Rogers, Friend, Mentor, Collaborator, staunch supporter of my publishing/licensing efforts, passed away on June 24, 2024 in the early afternoon. I will miss him sorely. I saw his masterful performances onstage many times. It was thrilling to watch performances and rehearsals of plays he had/was directing. I was privileged to edit and publish his significant collection of plays, and a musical we wrote together. He has joined his beloved Merriam. I know he is at peace. He will be sorely missed by students, friends, family and colleagues.

Plays in the Leicester Bay Theatricals Catalog

Musicals with Zion Theatricals / Leicester Bay Theatricals

Plays with Zion Theatricals

Other PLAYS AUTHORED

  • Intruder in the Dust (Faulkner adaptation — NOT AVAILABLE FOR PRODUCTION)
  • Judgment Day (Flannery O’Connor) (Racial language, pertinent to the issue and the time period, may have rendered this play unproduceable)
  • Woyzeck (from Buechner, a translation — NOT AVAILABLE FOR PRODUCTION)
  • Military Justice: The Last Mass Execution in the United States (Richard Whitingham history)
  • The Scarlet Letter (Opera libretto) (from Hawthorne)
  • Nest of Feathers — (NOT AVAILABLE FOR PRODUCTION)
  • Josephine — (NOT AVAILABLE FOR PRODUCTION
  • And He That Wavereth — (NOT AVAILABLE FOR PRODUCTION)
  • Once Upon a Summer — (NOT AVAILABLE FOR PRODUCTION)
  • The Deserted — (NOT AVAILABLE FOR PRODUCTION)

ARTICLES
Click Dialogue_V41N01_77 to read an article about Tom and his plays from a 1977 issue of DIALOGUE Magazine.

Click 1986_r_001 to read a review of the First Collection of Tom Roger’s plays by Eugene England called “God’s Fools: Plays of Mitigated Conscience”

Here is a monograph written by the author of “Huebener”, Thomas F. Rogers, after his return from a trip to Finland to see the production there in 2013. His insights into theatre in LDS culture, and religious culture in general are illuminating. Players by TFR

Tom’s newest book:

Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand: Reflections on Faith, Reason, Charity, and Beauty

by Thomas F. Rogers

  • Published by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
  • 349 Pages
  • ISBN-13: 978-0842529761

ABOUT THE BOOK:

“Is there a place in our literary canon for a thoughtful discussion of discipleship? Thomas Rogers provides here a resounding Yes. Essay after essay offers rich rewards for the exploring reader who wants to probe substantial ideas in a personal, affective, and intellectually broadening manner. These essays and commentaries add new dimensions to Tom’s literary and ministerial careers. As in his dramas, the writer s voice invites dialogue on the most sensitive and significant issues. Like the pastel paintings he has created in recent years, Tom s literary palette is somber, but rays of light illuminate the shadows, suggesting hope and purpose.” –Cherry B. Silver, past president of the Association for Mormon Letters

BUY THE BOOK FROM AMAZON ($21.95 in print, $9.99 in Kindle)

At last! — A collection of Thomas F. Rogers plays were issued in early 2017 by Zion Theatricals/Leicester Bay Theatricals in cooperation with Zion BookWorks/Leicester Bay Books. Click on the highlighted text to take you to the book’s page.

The Plays of Thomas F. Rogers Volume 1: Perestroika and Glasnost
with an introductions by Robert Nelson

Charades
Crime and Punishment
God’s Fools
The Idiot
The Second Priest

The Plays of Thomas F. Rogers Volume 2: Personal Journeys
with an introduction by Tim Slover

Frére Lawrence
Gentle Barbarian
The Immortal
The Seagull
Siegfried Idyll
The Wager
A Good Man Is Hard To Find (a short play)

The Plays of Thomas F. Rogers Volume 3: Crises in Faith

with an Introduction by J. Scott Bronson
Huebener
Fire In The Bones
First Trump
Reunion
Set Apart
The Anointed (a musical theatre play)
Petunia Passes (a short play)

HUEBENER and FIVE OTHER PLAYS by Thomas Rogers

  • Huebener
  • Fire in the Bones
  • Gentle Barbarian
  • Frére Lawrence
  • Charades