27 minute read
A&E
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As we creep up on the longest day of the year, it’s a reminder of everything that summer can be, especially here in Utah. It’s a time of heat and outdoor adventures, of encounters with the arts and encounters with nature. It’s a time of seemingly limitless possibilities—including the seemingly limitless ways that artists can explore the idea of warmth and light, as demonstrated in “A” Gallery’s Summer Solstice group exhibition.
In some cases, the representations of summer are literal and filled with affectionate nostalgia, like Gary Ruddell’s oil on panel work “Study for Lawn Sprinklers” (pictured), capturing a child at play and reveling in the cooling waters. Other pieces depict the regional landscape as it appears during this season, like Gregory Stocks’ oil on canvas “Blue Sky Fireworks,” Emily Robison’s canyonlands scene “Big Red” and Brian Koch’s images of sheep in the fields in “Ascension.” But there are also more abstract conceptions of warmth and light, as seen in David Adams’ acrylic and pencil on canvas piece “Jolt,” or Brent Godfrey’s bold acrylic “Dress in the Water.” And sculptural work by Brian Christensen like “Composition in Lime” almost pulse with the image of a circulatory system.
Summer Solstice shows at “A” Gallery (1321 S. 2100 East) June 10 – July 9, with an artist reception Friday, June 17, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.; regular gallery hours are Monday – Saturday, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. The entire exhibition is also available for viewing online at the gallery’s website. Visit agalleryonline for additional information. (Scott Renshaw)
GARY RUDDELL
Your favorite garden center since 1955 3500 South 900 East | 801.487.4131 www.millcreekgardens.com
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Ogden Arts Festival
Yes, it’s definitely arts festival season, with downtown SLC’s big event just a few weeks away. But that doesn’t mean you have to wait to start enjoying seasonal showcases of visual artists, music, food and general good times.
This weekend brings the Ogden Arts Festival to downtown Ogden, with two days of events and opportunities to get your art on. More than 100 artists will bring their work to the artist marketplace, including 40 participants never before seen at the Ogden Arts Festival and an “emerging artists” showcase area. Two performance stages will highlight live performances by a variety of local and regional musicians, dancers and other performing artists, including two performances by Grassroots Shakespeare Company. The urban arts area includes live graffiti mural creation and skateboard competition. Additional highlights include a Plein Air competition and silent auction on Saturday in conjunction with Eccles Art Center, plus access to Union Station museums including the Railroad Museum and the Browning/Kimball Classic Car Museum. And as always, the event will include plenty of family friendly “arttivities” and food & beer vendors.
The 2022 Ogden Arts Festival takes place at Historic Union Station (2501 Wall Ave., Ogden) on Saturday, June 11 (noon – 9 p.m.) and Sunday, June 12 (noon – 6 p.m.). Admission is $5 general admission (plus electronic ticketing fees) for adults, free for 18 and under. All entry payments will be digital, including onsite payment, so advance ticket purchases are encouraged. Visit ogdenartsfestival.com for tickets, or text 202-858-1233 for a clickable link. (SR)
ERIC CHRISTENSEN
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Nikki Glaser
It’s hard to believe that Nikki Glaser has already been doing standup for more than half of her life—but then again, you get a pretty good head start on the competition if you launch your career as a teenager. She made two appearances on Last Comic Standing and started making the usual late-night talk show rounds, but television could only do justice to Nikki Glaser so far, because when she decides to get real, it’s not the kind of stuff the FCC would approve of.
That much is clear from her most recent full-length special, the 2019 Netflix show Bangin’, in which she launches right into it with a bit about that moment as a girl when you learn about the concept of performing oral sex on a man. “I knew that sex was a thing, that a penis would go in my vagina some day,” she says. “But … I don’t have taste buds down there. Like, stick whatever you want down there, who cares? But my mouth? That’s where candy goes. I can’t believe you would put a dick there.” Like most comedians, Glaser endured a COVID-necessitated performance hiatus, but has come back strong with projects like her podcast The Nikki Glaser Podcast, hosting the HBO Max reality dating series FBoy Island, and the E! reality series Welcome Home, Nikki Glaser? You can get a live dose of Nikki when she stops in at Kingsbury Hall (1395 E. Presidents Circle) on Friday, June 10 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $48.25, with VIP meet-and-greet packages available. Visit artstickets.utah.edu for tickets and additional event information. (SR)
LUKE SCHWARZ
TEDx Salt Lake City
“Thank you for coming to my TED Talk” has become a jokey meme for anyone laying out their ideas and philosophy, but like anything that seeps into the popular consciousness, the history is often lost or largely unknown. The concept that became TED was born nearly 40 years ago, when architect Richard Saul Wurman began to notice unique convergences developing between technology, entertainment and design (hence the TED). And just to give you a sense of how long ago that original TED conference was, they were discussing such then-cutting-edge concepts as “the compact disc” and “e-books.”
Flash forward to 2022, and TED is a worldwide enterprise with satellite conferences taking place in multiple cities annually. This week’s TEDx Salt Lake City conference, like most of those satellite conferences, is an independent, locally-organized event that brings in a variety of speakers to talk about their unique areas of expertise and “ideas worth spreading.” The lineup of 15 participants is scheduled to include Refugee Soccer founder Adam Miles; University of Utah law professor and human rights advocate Erika George (pictured); poet/journalist Melissa Bond; entertainment entrepreneur Shaadie; and Stephanie Larsen, CEO of the LGBTQ+ resource center Encircle.
TEDx Salt Lake City comes to Granite Park Junior High School (3031 S. 200 East) on Saturday, June 11 beginning at 9 a.m. Tickets for the full-day event run from $21.21 - $108.05, which includes lunch from one of several participating food trucks and free parking. Visit TEDxSaltLakeCity.com for tickets and additional speaker and event information. (SR)
TK
THEATER Identity Matters
In Mestiza, or Mixed, Melissa Leilani Larson digs into her own biracial heritage.
BY SCOTT RENSHAW scottr@cityweekly.net @scottrenshaw
When I ask playwright Melissa Leilani Larson whether it’s a good or a bad thing to be fielding questions about racial identity when it comes to her play Mestiza, or Mixed, she acknowledges that the question itself gets at the complex relationship she has with her own racial identity. And the play is a way of wrestling with that relationship.
“I feel like I’m in this in-between place,” Larson says. “Because of my mixed identity, I’m coming to terms with being more comfortable identifying myself as a BIPOC person.”
Larson’s own mixed heritage—a white father born and raised in the U.S. in Southern Utah, and a Filipino mother—forms part of the foundation of Mesitza, or Mixed. The playwright creates a counterpart for herself in the protagonist Lark Timon, a struggling filmmaker whose career, defined mostly by disappointment, could get a big break, but one that forces her to confront questions about her identity.
There’s a bit of irony in the fact that Mestiza appears in the middle of a Plan-B Theatre Company season that artistic director Jerry Rapier has promoted as the first ever by a Utah company entirely consisting of new work by playwrights of color. Rapier himself had a role in encouraging Larson to create the play at all, she says, when she was talking with him about feeling like she was in that “in-between place.”
“We first started talking about it at the beginning of the pandemic,” Larson recalls. “He said, ‘You should put it in a play, it’ll be great.’ … Sometimes good theater is about being vulnerable. But I was thinking, ‘I’m writing drama, and my life is boring.’”
Crafting the narrative of Mestiza did require her to “create some drama for the sake of drama,” Larson says, but much of it did come from a very personal place. She acknowledges that creating something that was so much closer to her autobiographically—unlike many of her theatrical and screenplay projects, which often involved historical figures—presented unique challenges.
“The cutting of that vein stings a little more when you know the people,” Larson says. “It’s more about me, and do have parallels between me and Lark. But some of [the difficulty] was, ‘that’s my family,’ and that’s really hard. … It’s tricky, because while I think it’s probably okay to write about myself once I get over that, it’s not as easy to write about people who are close to me in the same way.”
It’s important for her to note, however, that autobiography can only be the start of something if it’s going to tell a story that an audience can connect with. Connect everything too much with yourself, as a writer, and you’ve missed a chance to dig deeper.
“When you’re writing a character, the creation of that character is a very personal thing. Sometimes part of the drafting process is asking, ‘What would I do in this situation?’ Sometimes it’s just a place-holder; we don’t want all characters to be me. … It’s about fleshing out the world, and making everything as real as possible. I tried to take what I felt was real, and go past that place to make something else, and make that experience real for the audience.”
Part of creating a distinct world for Lark in Mestiza was de-emphasizing the playwright’s own identity as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Faith has played a role in many of her other works, including her screenplays for Freetown and Jane and Emma, and Larson has proven adept at approaching the subject of faith in ways that aren’t simplistic or cheerleading for her church. For Mestiza, however, wanted to keep the focus on other elements of her identity. “I think you could make the argument that this family shares my faith,” she says, “but it didn’t affect this story, so it didn’t come up.”
Instead, Mestiza stayed true to its roots in talking about the parts of her identity that aren’t always easy to define simply. The complexity of lines between races, especially when it comes to people of mixedrace backgrounds, which is why Larson says it sometimes feels simplistic to her when people use the phrase “representation matters” related to artistic works.
“That’s a phrase that’s getting thrown around a lot now, and I am glad we’re seeing more directors and actors of color coming to the forefront and telling stories,” she says. “Sometimes it feels like, when we’re talking about race, which is so nuanced and complicated for a lot of people, that very complicated issue is boiled down to the simplest common denominator.
“When people talk about representation mattering, I never really expected that, because I don’t see people that look like me. … When I think about my family, I haven’t really seen a family that looks like mine [portrayed in art], so maybe I have to build it myself.” CW
Playwright Melissa Leilani Larson
MESTIZA, OR MIXED Plan-B Theatre Company Rose Wagner Center Studio Theatre 138 W. 300 South June 9-19 Streaming June 5-19 Proof of vaccination, including booster, and KN95 or N95 mask required for in-person performances planbtheatre.org
BY CAROLYN CAMPBELL
rica S. didn’t buy anything listed on the REI receipt that landed in her email. Instead, it was her stalker who chose the silky sleeping-bag liner, women’s underwear and European plug outlet.
He added Erica’s email address to his own REI account, even though she had left their relationship in 2016. When the two had been together, they spoke of visiting Norway and Switzerland, then backpacking through Europe.
Instead, she hit delete. Then she contacted REI to remove her email address from his membership account. But a week later, “The Stalker” sent Erica’s deskmate at work a “follow” request on Instagram, using the handle of his side business account.
Stalking can begin with something as simple as a rose left on a windshield. But, the legal definition of stalking requires a combination of incidents that cause concern or fear, explains Danielle Croyle, executive officer with South Salt Lake Police Department.
Stalkers may follow their victims to work, school, home and social gatherings. In addition, there may be continuous phone calls, texts, emails or social-media harassment and threats, says Kendra Wyckoff, executive director of Peace House, a victim-services organization in Park City.
She adds that a stalker might vandalize a victim’s car, break into her home or leave notes in places where he knows she will find them.
“Abusive partners can also use Apple AirTags or other small GPS devices to track a person by placing them inside of a victim’s vehicle, purse or something they own,” Wyckoff warns.
Erica said that in her case, the stalking behavior had persisted ever since she left the relationship. “There were only occasional periods of reprieve,” she said. “I didn’t initiate formal action until this behavior came to my work.”
Crossing Boundaries
More than 7 million people are stalked each year in the United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance. Even still, Alexandra Allen, assistant director of the Utah Crime Victims Legal Clinic, says that stalking is a crime that’s hard to understand. As a result, it’s hard to prove.
Stalkers are people who are obsessed with another person, Allen said, and while their behaviors are often related to a prior romantic connection, “I’ve seen plenty of cases where there was no real relationship.”
Croyle, of South Salt Lake Police, said that involving law enforcement often helps to compel a harasser to back off.
Through her own experiences and from reading scientific articles about the types of stalking personalities, Allen believes that stalkers tend to react in one of two ways. “They stop once they realize their behavior is unwanted,” she said, “or they never stop.”
Erica met The Stalker while working in an academic setting where he was a faculty member. They ended up together in a meeting. Twenty minutes after it ended, he contacted her, saying he wanted to know more about the work she did with the homeless.
The Stalker had left a long-term relationship. And soon after their first meeting, he said he wanted to see Erica socially. “I told him I was newly separated, going through a divorce and not in a position to see him,” she said.
At the time, Erica was pursuing a college education that she hadn’t sought earlier because of a troubled home life. “I ran away a lot and didn’t usually live at home,” she said. “My dad moved to another state when I was a junior. I was on my own often from the time I was 14.”
She adds, “When you live that lifestyle, there is little support.”
Erica found herself couch surfing, sleeping in boats in people’s driveways, in houses under construction and holing up in gas-station bathrooms. “I would hear about a party where I knew I could crash,” she said. “At one such party, I was assaulted.”
Her parents immediately put her into counseling, where she was diagnosed with PTSD. “After receiving that mental-health diagnosis as an adolescent, I learned how to manage it really well,” she said. “It is chronic, something I will live with daily for my entire life.”
Some people, says Erica, use mentalhealth diagnoses to stigmatize others. She believes her PTSD made her appear vulnerable in The Stalker’s eyes. “He used that as a weapon the entire time we were together,” Erica said. “There were times when he would literally say, ‘I am the psychology professor, and you are the patient.’”
Stalking often co-occurs with intimate partner violence, which can be how a person tries to exert power and control over another individual, says YWCA Prevention Program Director Jess Burnham. According to Burnham, stalkers seek to control victims using intimidation, making threats and isolating the person or thinking that their victim will be easy to control when they are separated from their support systems.
Burnham recalls a situation in which
“When you are dealing with a stalker, you need evidence,” says Alexandra Allen, of the Utah Crime Victims Legal Clinic.
—Erica
COURTESY PHOTO
a guide at the YWCA Salt Lake Family Justice Center helped a woman after her neighbor broke into her home. The survivor explained she had already filed a police report for stalking and harassment. And like many stalking victims, this woman knew the perpetrator and lived near him.
The neighbor had followed her while she walked her dog, constantly bumping into her on her walk down the street. Finally, the behavior escalated to his breaking-in and entering her home while she was in the shower.
While the majority of cases involve a male perpetrator and female victim, experts caution that stalking is a form of progressive violence and abuse that spans the gender and racial spectrum. Burnham recalled a male client seeking Family Justice Center services who identified his wife as a stalker, forcing him to get a new phone and move to a different apartment. Although they were separated, the wife threatened to send men to hurt her ex and ruin his business dealings.
No matter the relationship, stalkers can use verbal and financial abuse to manipulate the person they’re targeting,
No Turning Back
Five days before Erica and her children moved in with him, The Stalker disclosed that her name wouldn’t be on the house mortgage, nor would she have a lease. “He gave us no protection from being kicked out if he wanted,” Erica’s daughter wrote in a letter.
While they lived together as a couple, The Stalker told Erica there was a gun in the house, but he wouldn’t tell her where it was. And she wasn’t allowed to set up her own computer in their shared living quarters. She recalls him saying, “That’s just taking up more house space.”
At the time, when Erica had the remainder of one semester left to graduate from college, The Stalker would lock her out of their home office, preventing her from completing and turning in her coursework on time, she said. And there were occasions when he parked his car in a way that blocked her vehicle inside the garage.
“I would have to ride a bike to Rose Park, and I would be 30 minutes late,” she said.
When Erica questioned such behaviors, The Stalker would respond that punishment is supposed to be unpleasant. “This is how you learn,” she recalls him saying. “He punished me so that I would behave in a way he thought was pleasing.”
Erica admits that people might wonder why she stayed in such a relationship for any time at all. She explains that, earlier in the relationship, they would have a big argument once every month or so, “where he would have me crying in a corner.” It would take her days to recover.
Those arguments would be followed by a period of emotional “deprivation,” Erica described, followed by a renewed bout of attentiveness and support. “You grieve the loss of this person,” she described, which would be followed by a sort of honeymoon phase “where it’s like you are in a new relationship and the perfect partner is back.”
Over time, Erica said, the cycles became shorter. “There is no longer any false hope that I romanticize anything about him,” she said. “I know his love bombing is manipulative and disingenuous. I don’t think there was anything real about the partner I thought was great. The real person is the abuser.”
Erica spoke with the Utah Domestic Violence Coalition, asking for advice on safely leaving the relationship. She outlined her concerns. “I explained that he was uniquely capable of creating a situation where I was incapacitated,” she said. “He would get me crying in a corner very quickly, and I couldn’t do much. Now, I was terrified that I wouldn’t make it out the door.”
But on the day he chased her young son down the stairs and cornered him in his room, she knew there was no turning back. The Domestic Violence Coalition helped Erica create a strategy where she kept her essential documents—such as birth certificates—in a safe that she kept in her car. She also packed emergency clothes.
She and her children left under the pretense that her relationship with The Stalker would continue and that the furnished home she bought in Southern Utah would be theirs when they both retired. “I left behind my entire investment in the house and almost all of my furniture,” she said. Weeks later, Erica’s father hired movers to help her retrieve the family furniture. After they loaded the truck, he told her ex, “We expect you to stay away from her now.”
But, she adds, “Before we left, my dad reached out to shake The Stalker’s hand, in what looked like a weird gentleman’s agreement.” Despite the shared handshake, the stalking started almost immediately.
Erica moved across the state to get away from her stalker. “I didn’t want him anywhere near me. But he began to think of
“The first time something happens, and you know it shouldn’t happen, call us with the date and time,” says South Salt Lake Police executive officer Danielle Croyle.
COURTESY PHOTO
the house in Southern Utah as ‘our’ house,” she said. “He started showing up with bags of my stuff. A lot of it was broken.”
A photo of a cherished aunt was smashed, which he claimed was an accident while driving. She had also spent a lot of time and money on a vintage bike that was a collector’s item, but, “he stripped it and dropped off the frame,” she said. “When I asked why he did that, he said, ‘Because you weren’t there.’”
Allen, of the Utah Crime Victims Legal Clinic, said that while behavior like The Stalker’s when he and Erica lived together could be termed abusive, it wouldn’t be described as stalking until after she left the relationship. But after Erica and her children moved, she said her daughter received a manipulative email trying to arrange a family meeting so he could deliver a gift. Instead, she responded from her mother’s account (with expletives) telling him to leave her mother alone.
Gathering Evidence
Erica eventually felt safe moving back to northern Utah, although she decided not to return to Salt Lake City. She landed a job near the University of Utah and, before long, she saw a woman going through a new-hire orientation whom she had seen hiking with The Stalker.
“It took my breath away,” Erica recalls.
Later, she thought, “That is his girlfriend, and she got a job at my work. He’s here. He found a way. It didn’t matter that I had a police report going back a month and a half.”
The Stalker came to the office, had lunch with his girlfriend and attended events. Security camera footage revealed him milling around Erica’s office door. “He lingered for an uncomfortable time, standing on his tippy-toes looking in,” she said. “He was there on a visit with his girlfriend and her family.”
Erica talked with her boss, explaining that she was uncomfortable with this person. But she said she had no problem with The Stalker’s girlfriend working there. “I didn’t want to diminish any of her opportunities; I ran on the assumption that she is also a victim.”
Erica’s boss referred her to the Office of Equal Opportunity, which said that it made sense that she didn’t want to work with her former abuser there.
She was then referred to victim advocates at the University of Utah, who referred her to the Utah Crime Victims Legal Clinic, which provides free legal representation to crime victims when victims’ rights are at stake. “We represent victims of crime in criminal cases and protection orders,” says Allen.
Allen felt that Erica had accumulated sufficient evidence to seek a stalking injunction. “When you are dealing with a stalker, you need evidence,” Allen said. “The stories sound scary, and the victim feels crazy.”
But Allen added that Erica is smart and calculated and focused on what could be proven, which bolstered her case. “Later on, when we were deep into this, it blew my mind even more,” Allen said. “I would think, ‘we could have included this, or we could have included that.’ The more I learned, I knew this man decided to stalk Erica because he had lost control.”
Allen also understood when Erica followed her gut instinct and decided to pursue a cease-and-desist order instead of a stalking injunction because it would be less intrusive than the court process. “A cease-and-desist order, filed with the court, sets a strong boundary,” says Allen.
She explains that it’s easier for a police officer to enforce the law with such an order in place, “because part of their case is already there. There has already been a notice not to contact the person.” As a victim advocate, Allen helped Erica craft her cease-and-desist letter, stating that The Stalker was already informed to stop contacting Erica several years earlier.
Yet, he had ignored this request by contacting her and her children, friends, coworkers as well as the places where she worked. In one instance, after Erica and her current boyfriend marked their remote hiking location on the Strava app, The Stalker appeared there. He approached her daughter at a Bernie Sanders rally. He entered employees-only areas where Erica worked the day he located her office.
The Stalker hired an attorney who sent a rebuttal to the cease-and-desist order. It listed several reasons Erica would not prevail in seeking a stalking injunction against him, such as the idea that their lives would naturally intersect because of their past relationship and the reality that they both work in academia. In addition, the attorney stated that she felt Erica would never be able to prove that any of The Stalker’s actions could cause a reasonable person to fear for their safety or suffer emotional distress.
The attorney’s response included a mutual restraining order, which Erica did not sign. Erica explained that The Stalker had admitted in writing to coming to her work more than once and reaching out to her coworkers for “collaborations.”
“Making me and my requests seem crazy is the only way he could keep bulldozing my boundaries and forcing his way into the life I created for myself after I dissolved our relationship,” Erica said.
Peace House executive director Kendra Wyckoff warns that stalkers can use commercial GPS devices like Apple AirTags to track victims.
COURTESY PHOTO When his girlfriend’s temporary job in Erica’s office ended, The Stalker continued reaching out to Erica’s colleagues for collaborations. In one instance, Erica had booked an advance appointment for the day after Thanksgiving where she planned to accompany people who wanted to tour her organization.
“I checked and saw that the girlfriend was on the schedule with The Stalker at the same time,” she said, which prompted her to reschedule her appointments.
Allen and others from UCVLC filed documents and gathered witness statements in preparation for a hearing to consider banning The Stalker from the University of Utah. And in October 2020, the presiding officer ruled that evidence showed that The Stalker created a disruptive environment for Erica at her place of employment.
“I believe that you knew or should have known the impact you had on [Erica] ... including entering workspace not open to the general public—particularly in light of the tumultuous history of your relationship with Erica,” the officer stated. A no-trespass order was granted.
Today, Erica fears The Stalker will come back to her if she reveals their real names. She says his behavior was bolder and more overt during the first few instances, with later encounters designed to appear unplanned and accidental. “Because I refused to ruminate on him or our past, I ignored him and hit delete,” she said. “Then he got clever and started disguising the behavior behind coincidences, honest mistakes and overlapping professional interests.”
Eleven days after The Stalker responded to the cease-and-desist order that UCVLC submitted on Erica’s behalf, her colleague received an invitation to meet with one of The Stalker’s professional associates. “She reached out to two of my colleagues through this partner organization no fewer than four times following the cease-and-desist notice, including once three days after the no-trespass order was issued,” says Erica. “She also asked to be introduced to other employees at my work in one email.”
Another meeting request was sent on the same day that someone smashed Erica’s mailbox.
Erica says she has experienced no further stalking incidents since May 11, 2021. “I am grateful, and I want it to stay that way,” she said. “Like me, I am sure he does not want this terrible experience to define him.”
She says that her family and friends are safest when The Stalker is doing well.
“For our safety and the safety of those around him, I genuinely hope he can move on and live his life healthily and productively. Just nowhere near me, my friends or my family,” she said. “I have a right to a life without this man in it.” CW
