{"id":320,"date":"2013-03-28T18:12:13","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T18:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leicesterbaytheatricals.com\/?p=320"},"modified":"2024-06-25T00:58:12","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T00:58:12","slug":"the-plays-of-thomas-f-rogers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leicesterbaytheatricals.com\/?p=320","title":{"rendered":"Thomas F. Rogers \u2022 Author"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas F. Rogers<\/strong> — 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\u2019s 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\u2019S 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 \u2018Huebener\u2019 and Other Plays by Thomas F. Rogers. Rogers has also penned stage adaptations of Dostoevsky\u2019s novels CRIME AND PUNISHMENT and THE IDIOT, an opera libretto based on Hawthorne\u2019s THE SCARLET LETTER, a translation of Georg Buechner\u2019s 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.
\nIn 1995\u20131996 GOD\u2019S 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.\u00a0 During that mission he directed LDS Church members in a stage adaptation of Dostoevsky\u2019s 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.
\nAt BYU and in Provo, Utah, Rogers directed the premiere productions of Robert Vincek\u2019s For the Lions to Win<\/em>, Thom Duncan\u2019s Matters of the Heart<\/em> and Eric Samuselsen\u2019s Accommodations<\/em> and in Bountiful, Utah, a production of HUEBENER.\u00a0 Besides numerous productions in both Russian and German for the BYU Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages, he has directed Chekhov\u2019s The Three Sisters<\/em> (in German) for Deutsches Teater Salt Lake City, where he also performed as an actor, and Synge\u2019s Playboy of the Western World<\/em>, Pirandello\u2019s It Is So If You Think So<\/em> and Pinter\u2019s The Caretaker<\/em> for the BYU Department of Theatre.
\nCited by Eugene England as \u201cundoubtedly the father of modern Mormon drama,\u201d Rogers received the Mormon Arts Festival\u2019s 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: \u2018Superfluous Men\u2019 and the Post-Stalin\u2019thaw\u2019 (The Hague: Mouton, 1972) and Myth and Symbol in Soviet Fiction (San Francisco & New York: The Edwin Mellen Research University Press, 1992).
\nRogers 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,\u00a0forty grandchildren and, so far, fifteen great grandchildren, with more on the way. They reside in Bountiful, Utah.<\/p>\n

Thomas F. Rogers<\/strong>, 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.<\/p>\n

Plays in the Leicester Bay Theatricals Catalog<\/strong><\/p>\n