Eric Samuelsen


Eric Roy Samuelsen was an American playwright and emeritus professor of theatre at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He is considered one of the most important Mormon playwrights, and has been called a Mormon Charles Dickens or Henrik Ibsen. He won the Association for Mormon Letters drama award in 1994, 1997, and 1999, and was AML president from 2007 to 2009. In 2012 he received the Smith–Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters.

Biography

Eric Samuelsen was born in Provo, Utah, but spent most of his early life in Bloomington, Indiana. His father Roy was an opera singer, which introduced young Samuelsen to a love for theater productions. As a young man he served in Norway as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He received a bachelor's degree in theatre from BYU in 1983 and returned to Bloomington and earned a Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1991. He taught at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio before joining the faculty at BYU in 1992.
From 1999-2011 Samuelsen ran BYU's playwrighting program. Throughout his career, at least 24 of Samuelsen's plays were produced professionally throughout the United States, including California, Indiana, Louisiana, New York, and Utah.
Most of Samuelsen's early plays were produced at BYU, but around 2003 he began a relationship with Plan-B Theatre Company. Since 2006, Plan-B premiered a Samuelsen play every year. He became its playwright in residence in 2012, and many of his newer plays were produced there. This may be due to a more controversial bent in later plays; Borderlands has a character who is an openly gay Mormon youth.
Following illness and a diagnosis of polymyositis, a degenerative muscular disease, Samuelsen retired from BYU in 2012, where he had taught for 20 years. The next year, Plan-B Theatre Company dedicated 2013 as the "Season of Eric", presenting four of Samuelsen's plays.

Works

1970s