Romantic Comedy Dial Tones to Premiere at Covey Center for the Arts

(Provo, Utah) The Covey Center for the Arts is pleased to present Dial Tones, a romantic comedy by local playwright J. Scott Bronson, which will open in the Little Theatre on November 29th at 7:30pm.

Bronson is the author of a dozen or more plays, two of which were Mayhew Award winners, and one, Stones, which received the Association for Mormon Letters' 2001 Award for Best Drama. In addition to being a published playwright, Bronson is also a director and an actor and has acted in scores of stage an television productions.

He tells about the writing of Dial Tones in this way: "Once upon a time a theater geek named Scott met another theater geek named Lynne; they fell in love with each other, and they got married. One day, about a year and a half into their happy marriage, Lynne the Director went to her husband, Scott the Writer and said, ‘I need a play.' Thus, Dial Tones was born. It started out as a short, three character one act that Lynne directed for a class at BYU (she got an A). It soon became a full-length, five character piece that was worked over for a semester in BYU's Playwrights-Actors-Directors workshop."

This is the world premiere of Dial Tones, which is based on an article that Bronson read in The Reader's Digest while he was on his mission in Indonesia way back in the late 1970s. "I'm old and feeble now," the forty-nine year-old Bronson says, "so my memory is shadowy on the details, but it had something to do with a correspondence between someone in New York and someone else in London." Bronson updated the situation with a contemporary local setting; the events of the play take place in the mid 1980s in San Diego, Bronson's home town. He gave the correspondence some immediacy by replacing the hand-written letters with voice-spoken telephone conversations.

The two young lovers in this story–Kelly and Hazel, who maintain a phone relationship only (having decided to never meet in person)–are played by Elwon Bakly and Fallon Hanson, respectively. Bronson and Bakly worked together a number of times, most notably in Bronson's religious drama, Stones, with the Nauvoo Theatrical Society in 2003. Bronson met Hanson about three years ago when both of them played faeries in Provo Theater Company's production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. (Bronson maintains that he is likely the heaviest person ever to have played the King of the faeries at 275 lbs.)

Bronson says, "Elwon and Fallon are two of the most beautiful people I've ever met, and when I had them read together in the audition process, there was an unmistakable presence of that ineffable product we call chemistry. I thought, ‘people are really going to enjoy watching these two fall in love.'"

Very early in the writing process, Bronson discovered that in order to have these two meet accidentally without it seeming like some creepy stalking situation, he had to invent a character that would make them meet on purpose, unbeknownst to them. Since he is–in addition to being a theatre geek–a science fiction geek as well, Bronson felt that the logical thing to do was to have an artificial intelligence arrange the whole thing as a kind of practical joke. And so the story of the hapless couple is narrated by a sentient supercomputer intelligence played by another Midsummer faerie, Amelia Schow.

"This really is what we call a tour de force role," Bronson says. "When I started writing the play, I thought it was a romance about these two people who get caught up in the magic of anonymity, but it didn't take me very long to discover that it's really about this artificial intelligence (AI) that is trying to figure out what it means to be human; more precisely, what it means to be a human that loves." As the AI, Schow is also required to take on the personas of Kelly's best friend, Daniel, and Hazel's nosey mother. "Amelia really has the hardest part to play in this thing," says Bronson. "She's a genderless non-human entity, a roustabout young male, and an overbearing middle-aged woman. And she has to read Emily Dickenson poetry to boot." Emily Dickenson? "That's right, Bronson says with a grin. "That's how the AI connects with the world of humans. Who knew that Emily would be so prescient about the thoughts, feelings and yearnings of a super being trying to be a real person?"

Bronson is directing his own play.

Dial Tones will be open at the Covey Center for the Arts Little Theater on Thursday, November 29th at 7:30pm, and will run Thursday, Friday and Satueday Nights through December 22nd. Tickets for the event are $10 for the general public and $7.50 for students and seniors, and are available at the Covey Center for the Arts ticket office, 425 West Center Street in Provo (801-852-7007).

Definitely going to come to this, Scott! I loved this script.
You casted Fallon! Yay! Fallon was in two of my plays (Farewell To Eden and Sleepy Hollow). A very talented actress! And I also love Amelia. She costumed my show Friends of God and acted with me in As You Like It and Parley P. Pratt's Great Escape. Then Elwon I've seen in Stones and Matters of the Heart. What a talented cast!

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Upon the stage of a theater can be represented in character, evil and its consequences, good and its happy results and rewards; the weakness and the follies of man, the magnamity of virtue and the greatness of truth. The stage can be made to aid the pulpit in impressing upon the minds of a community an enlightened sense of a virtuous life, also a proper horror of the enormity of sin and a just dread of its consequences. The path of sin with its thorns and pitfalls, its gins and snares can be revealed, and how to sun it (Discourses of Brigham Young, p.243; Bookcraft, 199

I'm going to go see Dial Tones on Friday, Dec. 14. I'm going to eat dinner before that at Ottavio's (a few blocks east of the theater on Center Street). Eric Samuelsen and a few other AML people are planning on joining me. I'd love to see you there, too! It's AML night at the theater, hey? Scott? Could you come too?

ADDED LATER: I've changed the date to Saturday the 15th. Sorry about that, folks.

Man! I want to come on AML night!
I'll probably be there either Saturday or sometime next week.

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Upon the stage of a theater can be represented in character, evil and its consequences, good and its happy results and rewards; the weakness and the follies of man, the magnamity of virtue and the greatness of truth. The stage can be made to aid the pulpit in impressing upon the minds of a community an enlightened sense of a virtuous life, also a proper horror of the enormity of sin and a just dread of its consequences. The path of sin with its thorns and pitfalls, its gins and snares can be revealed, and how to sun it (Discourses of Brigham Young, p.243; Bookcraft, 199

If we gather at Ottavio's at around 5:30ish I may be able to stay for the whole meal.

Let's make it 5:30 at Ottavio's then.

Oh, I'm sorry I missed that you were going tonight. I may have switched my plans around (we went to a friend's ballroom concert). Anne and I will be seeing it next week.

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Upon the stage of a theater can be represented in character, evil and its consequences, good and its happy results and rewards; the weakness and the follies of man, the magnamity of virtue and the greatness of truth. The stage can be made to aid the pulpit in impressing upon the minds of a community an enlightened sense of a virtuous life, also a proper horror of the enormity of sin and a just dread of its consequences. The path of sin with its thorns and pitfalls, its gins and snares can be revealed, and how to sun it (Discourses of Brigham Young, p.243; Bookcraft, 199

I'm just now catching up on the Board...yeah, I'll come for AML night to the show, at least, and possibly also dinner. Would not want to miss a new play going up in Provo, especially since I sort-of can pretend to know the playwright. :)

Anyone heading down to Provo from Salt Lake for the dinner at 5:30? Please contact me at daryoung at yahoo dot com. Thanks!

Right, right. You got it, Scott. And can I tell you what a pleasure it is to think that I will get to eat with The Playwright before the show.