Dust motes gently fell in the late afternoon light streaming through the cultural hall windows. The teal velvet curtain had been drawn open, revealing the church stage’s current function: storage for stake athletic equipment, part of an old pinewood derby track, a broken classroom table, and a couple of dusty Christmas trees. We youth leaders stood around the hall, arms crossed, contemplating what lay before us.
“You mean you want to use the stage as, like, a stage?” Brother Turnbow asked, his voice echoing slightly in the empty hall.
“I remember we had a talent show once,” he added, gesturing toward the platform. “Up there on the stage.”
“Did you guys ever do a roadshow when you were kids?” Sister Maynes asked. Everyone shook their heads.
“I think that was before our time,” Sister Beck said, running her hand along the dusty curtain.
Just then, three of the youths walked into the cultural hall, their footsteps echoing across the wooden floor. “What’s going on?” Sarah, one of our most reserved young women, asked.
“We’re thinking of putting on a play,” I said. “Shakespeare. What do you think?”
“Like we would be in it?” Sarah’s eyes widened. I nodded. “Like we could wear costumes and everything?” I nodded again. “With the stage lights on and people watching? Do the lights even work?”
Before we could answer, the youth were already on the stage, pulling at cords and examining switches. Sarah, who rarely spoke above a whisper in Sunday School, was already directing the others on where to look for the light controls.
Over the next six weeks, we watched our youth transform. Sarah, cast as Puck, found her voice growing stronger with each rehearsal. When the lighting system proved more complex than expected, David, who struggled to sit still through meetings, spent hours learning its ins and outs. The kids made costumes from borrowed sheets and Halloween leftovers, turning the cultural hall into an enchanted forest with paper trees and strings of old Christmas lights.
Then, in front of the rest of our popcorn-eating ward, they performed a shortened version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Sarah’s final monologue rang clear across the cultural hall, her confidence clearly magnified.
According to local legend, the church stage had once received plenty of use between roadshows, talent shows, and something called “speech festivals.” To return the stage to its former glory, we had to resurrect a tradition none of us had seen. We didn’t know how to direct a play. We didn’t even know if “stage left” meant the left side if you’re standing on the stage facing out or standing on the floor looking in. But none of that seemed to matter.
In many ways, we were following in the footsteps of pioneer Martha Jane Coray, though we didn’t realize it at the time. In 1840s Nauvoo, with its muddy streets and half-built homes, Coray faced her own empty stage. She taught school despite her lack of formal education, gathering children in whatever space she could find, creating lesson plans without textbooks or curriculum guides. Time and again, she tackled projects she might have shied away from. And when Brigham Young appointed her to the original Board of Trustees for Brigham Young Academy, she responded with “heartfelt thanks” for the opportunity.
An institution like Brigham Young Academy hadn’t existed before, so Coray and other trustees didn’t have a pattern to follow. Just as we fumbled with stage directions, she wrestled with fundamental questions: What should a Mormon university look like? How could faith and learning intertwine? She leaned into light, working cooperatively with other leaders and admonishing all to pay attention to “how close principles of faith, honor and a deep desire for general intelligence cling to the scholar even after leaving Brigham Young Academy.”
In an 1876 letter to Brigham Young, she stated her educational philosophy: “my principle in education has been God’s laws of religion first man’s laws of honor and morality 2nd a science of every attainable kind and as much as possible but lastly in forming a permanent base for character and hope of future salvation.” She was building something new while holding fast to eternal principles.
When Coray died, two wings of the Provo Tabernacle were filled with students from the Academy, and students served as her pallbearers. She hadn’t just passed along a torch she’d received; she had shaped the torch, created fuel, lit it, and gently handed it off.
Our production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was a slight echo of Coray’s monumental efforts. We didn’t start an institution of learning or settle the wild frontier. But six months later, when Sarah led a group of younger girls in organizing a talent show, we saw our small torch being passed along. The stage lights still worked, and this time, everyone knew exactly what “stage left” meant.
Work Cited
Black, Susan Easton, and Mary Jane Woodger. Women of Character: Profiles of 100 Prominent LDS Women. Covenant Communications, 2011.
