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A very memorable story

A very memorable story

Last updated on: May 4, 2026 at 5:59 pm by Dan Peterson

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A very memorable story 2026-05-04T17:59:06-06:00 Dan Peterson

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“Emma Smith” (portrayed by Camrey Bagley Fox) prepares to meet with “Brigham Young” (played by John Donovan Wilson) for a scene, after the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, in the Interpreter Foundation’s 2024 movie Six Days in August.

I’m pleased to report that Episode 15 of the Interpreter Foundation’s Becoming Brigham series is now available online. Focused on the relationship between Brigham Young and Emma Smith, it’s entitled “The Lion and the Lady.” And, yes, it does refer in passing to plural marriage in Nauvoo.

The official poster for the play *fair use)

When we’ve gone out on our four- or five-day filming expeditions for Becoming Brigham — I assume that they’ve done the same thing on the filming trips for Witnesses and Undaunted and Six Days in August, though I’ve not gone along on those trips — the custom is to have a movie night, with popcorn and maybe pizza, in one of the hotel or motel rooms. The point is to celebrate the completion of several (often long) days of filmwork on the night before the flight or the drive back home. It’s the responsibility one of the hosts or actors or film crew to choose the film for movie night.

On one of the trips, the choice fell to James Jordan of Redbrick Filmworks, and he selected Chiwetel Ejiofor’s 2019 movie The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, set in Malawi in southeastern Africa, which I had never before seen or even heard of, but which I thoroughly enjoyed. Tonight, my wife and I saw it onstage as a Royal Shakespeare Company musical at the Soho Place Theatre, in the heart of Soho, which is one of the major entertainment districts of London. (Strictly speaking, Soho is a district of Westminster, in the City of Westminster. But it’s also in the West End of London, and Soho Place Theatre is said to be the newest theater in the West End.) The musical is evidently based on the film, which itself is ultimately based on the 2009 nonfiction autobiographical book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope, by William Kamkwamba (who was fourteen at the time that the story told in the book, the movie, and the play took place) and Bryan Mealer.

We absolutely loved the play. We really liked the theater itself, too, which (at least on the main floor) has no bad seats. Somehow we ended up on the second row to the side of the large thrust stage. (There are only four rows on the sides.) The cast is virtually all Black, and the music and the acting are both excellent and very African (though sometimes I was reminded of Polynesian choral singing). The story is powerfully positive, despite elements of conflict, injustice, and tragedy.

A trailer for the London performance is accessible here, though I don’t think that the selected music captures the African character of the overall score. Nor does what was probably my favorite single song from the play, which is rather ballad-like and which is partially shown in this video from a cast rehearsal. And which I wouldn’t be surprised to see become a popular standard.

Just in case you can’t already tell, I enthusiastically recommend The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind to you. Unfortunately, its run at the Soho Place Theatre will be short and is strictly limited. So, if you want to see the play in London, you’ll need to get here soon. Happily, though, I’m confident that it will make its way to the United States and elsewhere, if it hasn’t already. And, in the meantime, you might like the book and/or the movie.

I post this photograph of Antarctica in an experiment designed to test how far my Mini-Stalker is prepared to follow me. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

One of the fixtures on the Peterson Obsession Board (POB) goes by a pseudonym that resembles “Everybody’s WC.” (He’s also known as my “Mini-Stalker,” because he’s the late-coming wannabe “Mini-Me” to my more talented “Malevolent Stalker,” who’s been on the case for nearly a quarter of a century now. He plays the handmaid to the senior Stalker’s “Lady Disdain.”) The Mini-Stalker long claimed to have accompanied me on a tour of Israel and promised to post a report thereafter on my various lies and buffoonish antics during the tour. Unfortunately, his report never actually appeared and, after considerable time had elapsed, he was obliged to acknowledge that his claim was, umm, less than fully accurate.

Recently, though, he evidently has been traveling in parallel with me in southern Utah and now to Europe, and he’s managed to capture candid photographs of me in my natural habitat, doing the things that I actually spend most of my time doing. How he came so close to me without my noticing is a tribute to his cleverness and skill. My wife and I haven’t visited the National Portrait Gallery yet during this current visit to Europe, but they will probably appear there shortly. In the meanwhile, I’ve been able to borrow these invaluable images from his posts on the Obsession Board.

Here I am, tucking into a smallish chicken-fried steak somewhere in southern Utah. (As you can readily see, it’s likely that I’m personally responsible for the food shortages in Malawi and elsewhere in Africa.) Unfortunately, no images of the five colleagues who accompanied me on the trip and to each of the restaurants that we visited seem to have survived. (This genuine, fully authentic, and in no way AI-related photo comes courtesy of my Mini-Stalker)

The recent visit to Fillmore, Richfield, Escalante, and St. George, in southern Utah, was ostensibly a filmmaking trip for Becoming Brigham, but that was obviously just a cover for things like donor-paid Philly cheesesteaks, chocolate milkshakes, turkey chili, and, of course, boxes and boxes and boxes of doughnuts, because such rare delicacies are impossible to obtain along the Wasatch Front. (It’s impossible to fool the ever-vigilant sleuths at the Obsession Board!)

During that same recent tour of Southern Utah, I attempt to lure a trusting young man into my life of gluttony and unequaled self-indulgence.

I’m in London at the moment and will be in the United Kingdom for roughly the next three weeks before returning home. However, my blog post yesterday referred to Paris in its title and in an accompanying photograph on Facebook, which alerted my Mini-Stalker to France. There, he found me in the Champ de Mars, as shown immediately below:

Here I am in Paris — could you tell? the hint is quite subtle — seducing yet another young man into my dark world of continuous fine dining.

A couple of weeks ago over at the Obsession Board, my Mini-Stalker informed his small coteries of fellow obsessives that I need to “get a life.”

Posted (still) from London, England

Travel and Religion

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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

William Kamkwamba

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