Dutcher's efforts applauded

For many years the Deseret Morning News carried a column by Sidney Harris, a great mind who is no longer with us. I remembered one of his columns as I read Chris Heimerdinger's "My View" (Sept. 4) chastising Richard Dutcher and other LDS artists who "seek to awaken the LDS people from their stupor of ignorance" (Heimerdinger's words, not Dutcher's). To quote Harris, "Only shallow television plays have straightforward plots and endings that are neatly tied up ... (and) need not have been written, except as light entertainment or a didactic lesson.

"A play of consequence cannot solve our perplexities," Harris continued, "but hopes to illuminate them, to act as a kind of laser beam cutting beneath the skin and bone, to the core of our carefully concealed sensibility."

Marilyn Bushman-Carlton

Draper