Don't Worry: Just Start
- Rebecca Burnham
- May 29
- 6 min read
Today’s post is a bit of a departure from my normal. I’m introducing you to Gunnar Michael Andersen, a composer with an enormous work in progress that’s deeply anchored in his faith. Normally, I write about works that have already been staged. But this ongoing story feels important to share for several reasons.
First, there’s something in this story that I deeply relate to. I have launched Summit Stages because I felt persistently called to do it. I didn’t have the credentials, the connections, or the business smarts and I spent years hoping someone who did would show up to move this vision forward so I could just focus on writing some musicals. I told myself I was a creative, not a business person, and building the organization was outside of my skillset. Only the call wouldn’t go away, and then I had a timely opportunity to take a course in entrepreneurship with some excellent coaching attached, and now here we are.
Second, I feel a profound assurance that there are a whole bunch of other people who are feeling similarly called in some way to the work of building the Beloved Community through musical theatre. I suspect a bunch of them may also be feeling intimidated by their outsider status and perceived lack of qualifications. If you’re one of them, I’m hoping this story (and another I’ll be sharing with you soon) will help you find the courage to just start anyway.
Third, Gunnar’s story has particular resonance in Utah, which as I’ve shared before seems like a great starting place for a flowering of musical theatre that unites us across our divides. It opens up some opportunities to gather Utahns to our movement, which I’ll address in more detail further down. So, here is that story.
Gunnar Michael Andersen has been writing his musical about the life of Joseph Smith (the founder of the Latter-Day Saint movement) for 33 years. It started when he was 31, shortly before he converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He'd begun seriously investigating the religion out of a deep-set admiration for his Latter-Day Saint neighbors, and was eager to hear about their beliefs, but his credulity was stretched by some of what they taught, especially a barely-educated farm-boy who claimed to be a prophet of God. He decided to study the history for himself.
“I was blown away by what I was reading. I mean, it's an incredible American history that isn't taught in schools…” He felt like it ought to be. “There's incredible passion on both sides, both the protagonists and antagonists. There's incredible commitment and loyalty. There's incredible tragedy.” There were also spiritual manifestations and other compelling moments throughout the history that could not be conveyed through a dry text or even a play or movie. “It just felt like it needed to be sung.”
That’s when the dream of turning the story into a musical first occurred to him, because unlike other forms of staging a story, musicals allow for “moments of reflection that express the motivations of the heart” with song. So he started taking notes, writing songs about moments that needed to be captured, outlining a script with opening and closing quotes. But he was a newcomer to his church, one who had only worked briefly in a Hollywood recording studio before bypassing a bachelor’s degree to get his Masters in business. He figured there were other people much better qualified for the project than a guy who played by ear and decompressed on the weekend by writing songs instead of golfing.
The idea wouldn’t leave him alone, however, so he kept at it intermittently–that is, until eight years ago when, while in prayer, he felt specifically directed to work on it every day. By this time, he was a senior executive in a Fortune 200 company, responsible for a global supply chain and always on call. Time was in very short supply and he was still keenly aware of his lack of qualifications. But he felt a divine assurance that if he would work on it every day, the Lord would make up the difference for those areas where he lacked in skill or talent. Some days, all he did was open his laptop and fix some punctuation in the script. He just made sure he did something.
Then, four years ago, his company experienced a hostile takeover and the entire executive team was let go. He was about to look for another position when his wife, Trudy, suggested that they were okay for money and maybe it was time to work on his musical full-time. Since then, he has created more songs than he could possibly fit into even a megamusical. His playlist at https://brotherjosephthemusical.com/ is 2 ½ hours long; another ¾ hour of music is nearing completion. And there are still more songs begging to be written.
Why so long? Partly because he felt to create a more nuanced depiction, especially of the people who fought against and demonized Joseph Smith–persecutions which ultimately led to his 1844 martyrdom. Many of the antagonists, Gunnar explains, “were devout individuals who got caught up in misinformation and fear about this new religious movement.” They weren’t bad. They were caught up in misinformation and social pressures, like we tend to do today. “When we start to understand this historical context, what happens is we gain insights into human behavior that transcend any particular time period, any belief system.”
How is he going to take all that nuance and pare it down into a comprehensible and entertaining stage show of no more than 3 hours? Will he sacrifice some of the nuance? Break his creation up into multiple musicals? Gunnar doesn’t know, yet. He’s taking one step at a time.
And, as a result of our conversation, we both have a new next step, beginning next week when we launch a podcast together. This year, our denomination’s Sunday School program is focused on our early church history, the same period of time that Gunnar has been exhaustively studying for his musical. On our podcast, we hope to share insights from our history about our successes and failures building Zion and discussion about how they apply to our current moment. We’ll feature some of Gunnar’s songs and learn how they connect with audiences. And that will help us both to gather a following in Utah, where we each need it.
We plan to have our first episode up next week. I’ll include a link in the newsletter for those interested. For me, as a fellow Latter-day Saint, the work of revisiting our history in a way that helps us see our own errors and forgive our enemies is exciting. I see this work as critical to becoming capable of Beloved Community. Joseph Smith himself had something to say about this. He’s quoted as counseling someone who’d been maligned by gossip: “When I have heard a story about me, I sit down and think about it and pray about it, and I ask myself the question ‘Did I say something or was there something about my manner to give some basis for that story to start?’ … Often if I think about it long enough I realize I have done something to give that basis. And there wells up in me a forgiveness of the person who has told that story, and a resolve that I will never do that thing again.”
Building the Beloved Community doesn’t happen just by being “right” in our dealings with others. In fact, focusing on doing everything right is often a reason that we wind up falling short in our efforts to build such a community. When we’re intent on being right, we wind up being unable to see where we’re wrong and fixated on how the other person needs to change their behaviour, to get out of the way, so that the work can move forward. My own history is replete with such incidents. So, I think, is the history of the Zion-seeking church which Joseph Smith founded (Zion is the LDS term for the Beloved Community). But when we can find the courage to listen to each other, to deeply consider the perspective of our detractors and even learn from it, then we recognize our need for grace and, simultaneously, have access to it.
The huge collection of stories that Gunnar has put to music offers an opportunity for that kind of practice. When musical theatre doesn’t reinforce our defensive narratives about us and them, when instead, it allows us to see where they are coming from and to hold all of us with compassion, it becomes a mighty instrument of healing, for our own hearts and our society.
We’re firming up our podcast name and would love your feedback. Please click here to see the names we’re considering and tell us your preference.
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