Book of Mormon Broadway Musical is coming to Kansas City

Last week Our Branch President asked Sister Anderson and I to lead a discussion on how to respond and or take advantage of the Book of Mormon Musical coming to Kansas City. Then yesterday he said he got further clarification and the Church has produced a DVD that will be shown on the 5^th Sunday that will provide training on how to respond. So we are off the hook, However I had already done a little research during the week so I thought I would share what I had found below.

The Musical has been very successful financially:

The New York production of The Book of Mormon employed an innovative pricing strategy, similar to the ones used in the airline and hotel industries. The producers have been able to charge as much as $477 for the best seats for performances with particularly high demand.^[20] The strategy paid off handsomely. During its first year, the show was consistently one of the top five best-selling shows on Broadway and set 22 new weekly sales records for the Eugene O'Neill Theater. For the week of Thanksgiving 2011, the average paid admission was over $170 even though the highest priced regular seat was listed at $155.^[21] High attendance coupled with aggressive pricing allowed the financial backers to recoup their investment of $11.4 million after just nine months of performances.^[22]

The Book of Mormon Broadway Musical was created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone who are also the creators of South Park a crudely animated TV show that has satirized everything in the news and pop culture for the past 15 years. They are know as the Kings of vulgar cartoon comedy.

Viewers of South Park — won't be surprised to learn that Mormons are the focus of the duo's new musical; the religion has been popping up on South Park for years. In one episode, Mormon prophet Joseph Smith fought an evil David Blaine. In another, a Hell Director giving an orientation announced that only Mormons made it into heaven.

I tried to find the video clip on line but was not successful, but this is the narrative:

One of the funniest segments in all of South Park was a scene in Hell, which although it's humorous has a serious point to make about all the thousands of religious sects and cults around the world. Here's the transcript:

You can watch it here:
Probably (Season 4, Episode 11) - Full Episode Player - South Park Studios
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Speaker- Hello, newcomers, and welcome. Can everybody hear me? [taps the mic a few times] Hello? Can everybuh-? Okay. [the crowd quiets down] Uh, I'm the hell director. Uh, it looks like we have about 8,615 of you newbies today, and for those of you who are a little confused, uh, you are dead, and this is hell, so, abandon all hope and uh yada yada yada. Uh, we are now going to start the orientation process, which will last about-

Man- Hey, wait a minute, I shouldn't be here. I was a totally strict and devout Protestant! I thought we went to heaven!

Hell director- Yes, well I'm afraid you were wrong.

Soldier- I was a practicing Jehovah's Witness.

Hell director- Uh, you picked the wrong religion as well.

Another man- Well, who was right? Who gets into heaven?

Hell director- I'm afraid it was the Mormons. Yes, the Mormons were the correct answer.

Crowd- [disappointed] Awww.

 

While the writers Parker and Stone claim to be agnostic, I believe they are greatly conflicted by the fact that Mormons are generally happy people and truly believe in things Parker and Stone seem to have great difficulty believing. Below are comments and quotes I found from them on the internet.

Growing up in Colorado, next door to Utah, Parker and Stone had long been familiar with the Mormon church and its members; Parker even dated a Mormon girl and was badly hurt when she ditched him.

"I don't think anybody would want to see a two-hour-long Mormon-bashing, and we wouldn't want to see that either," Parker tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "We love the goofiness of Mormon stories. Some of them are incredulous, and we loved almost all the Mormons that we had ever met. So this was sort of this conundrum that we like to talk about — we think what they believe is really, really ridiculous, and yet they seem like pretty happy people."

Parker says.

"The official church response was something along the lines of 'The Book of Mormon the musical might entertain you for a night, but the Book of Mormon,' — the book as scripture — 'will change your life through Jesus,' " Stone says. "Which we actually completely agree with. The Mormon church's response to this musical is almost like our Q.E.D. at the end of it. That's a cool, American response to a ribbing — a big musical that's done in their name."

"Before the church responded, a lot of people would ask us, 'Are you afraid of what the church would say?' And Trey and I were like, 'They're going to be cool.' And they were like, 'No, they're not. There are going to be protests.' And we were like, 'Nope, they're going to be cool.' We weren't that surprised by the church's response. We had faith in them."

Parker and Stone were asked in an interview with Reason Magazine about their feelings on the Mormon religion. The following is an excerpt from the interview:

Parker: I've been fascinated with the Mormons for a long time. They are the nicest people in the world. If a religion's going to take over the world, and the one that really believes "just be super nice to everyone" takes over, that's all right with me.

Stone: I was raised agnostic. There was no religion in my house.

Parker: I was pretty much the same.

reason magazine: I have Mormon friends who are convinced you guys were raised Mormon, because of some of the references in the show.

Parker: Well, we grew up in Colorado. Colorado's right next to Utah--you know, Mormon Central. My first girlfriend was Mormon, and I went to experience family home evening at her house for the first time. "What are you all doing?" "We're sitting, and we're singing songs and playing games together." I was like, "Boy, that's (messed except he didn’t say messed) up. Families are not supposed to be doing that."

Although the Broadway musical, "The Book of Mormon," is edgy and controversial, its creators,Matt Stone and Trey Parker, insisted that Mormons should not be offended by its content.

"They're so happy-go-lucky, kind of optimistic people, and they kind of have that cheesy factor," Parker said. "It's like Mormons, Disney, Rogers and Hammerstein, it all kind of makes sense...Mormons are just happy people so you're going to get a happy musical out of it."