LITTLE HAPPY SECRETS

Claire and Brennan have been best friends for years. But when the two are brought back together after two years apart, Claire wonders if the feelings she has for Brennan might go beyond friendship.

LITTLE HAPPY SECRETS is available to license as a full-length (75-80 minutes) or as a one-act (45-50 minutes). Please contact the author with any royalty requests.

“It’s the kind of play that makes half of the small audience cry for all the right reasons, without even a hint of saccharine…. I’d say that this play alone could redeem Mormon play/screenwriting as a genre.”
– eris91, Young Mormon Feminists

The above recording features Laurel Sandberg-Armstrong as Claire; Katherine Gee Perrone as Brennan; Kevin Goertzen as Carter and Lindsy Adamson as Natalie. It was directed by James Goldberg; recorded by Steven Gashler; engineered and edited by Owen Merkling; produced by Melissa Leilani Larson. This recording was the first public performance of LITTLE HAPPY SECRETS, made in fall 2008; since it was made, there have been revisions to the play, but the majority of the text is intact.

Winner of the 2009 Association for Mormon Letters Drama award, LITTLE HAPPY SECRETS is also available to in Mel’s solo debut book, Third Wheel: Peculiar Stories of Mormon Women in Love, as well as the anthology Out of the Mount: 19 from New Play Project. In 2022, THIRD WHEEL was included on a list of 100 significant works of Mormon Literature. See the full list here.

“What a gorgeous and heart wrenching play. I was totally sucked in by Claire and the impossible situation she is in with her best friend. Reading the play I laughed and cried more than once. Larson uses beautiful language and a sparse style of storytelling that kept me gripped by LITTLE HAPPY SECRETS from start to finish. Highly recommend both reading and producing this play, we need more plays like it being done across the country!”
– Playwright Rachel Bublitz, on the New Play Exchange

“LITTLE HAPPY SECRETS gives the Mormon world a fresh glimpse at the naked truth of our propensity to marginalize each other, and our struggles to reconcile ourselves with a world where secrecy is often valued over individuality…. [F]rom the rubble of a bygone era, LITTLE HAPPY SECRETS emerges with intimate moments of honesty rarely seen in narrative depictions of Mormon life.” – Andy Andersen, Student Review

“Larson has written a play, not a polemic. If anything, the play is a celebration, of a culture rooted in compassion, of a plan that requires heartbreak and loss and pain. A celebration of heartbreak. Larson writes dialogue with a directness and simple eloquence, in which the characters move from conversations with each other to a larger conversation with the audience and, through us, with Mormonism itself.”
– Association for Mormon Letters 2009 Drama Award citation

“Having read and seen a considerable amount of contemporary Mormon drama, it is my opinion that LITTLE HAPPY SECRETS ranks among the best, and is certainly among the very best works by female Mormon playwrights (of which there are far too few).” – Callie Oppedisano, Utah Theatre Bloggers

“I found LITTLE HAPPY SECRETS incredibly touching. It is an honest, heartfelt portrayal of the turmoil that can only be experienced when forces as deeply ingrained as sexuality and faith collide.”
– Ben Christensen, Front Row Reviewers

“LITTLE HAPPY SECRETS unpacks the painful and bittersweet romance between two women in a play so honest that the ache of Melissa Leilani Larson’s work feels utterly familiar.” – Dale Thompson, Artists of Utah’s 15 Bytes

“LITTLE HAPPY SECRETS…is a brave, open play about same-sex attraction, relationships, grief, suicide, family and what it looks like to struggle silently in our BYU/Mormon community. It encouraged me to think we might be on the brink of more openness, more storytelling, less secrets, more honesty.”
– C. Jane Kendrick, writer & blogger, cjanekendrick.com