Sample
the Music
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Song
Title:
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"Opening/Come
Away"
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Musical
Style:
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Musical
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CD:
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Trail
of Dreams
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Song (.mp3):
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Clip (.mp3):
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Song
Title:
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"A
Box for My Dreams"
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Musical
Style:
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Musical
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CD:
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Trail
of Dreams
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Download
Song (.mp3):
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Download
Clip (.mp3):
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About
Steven Kapp Perry
Steve is a full-time songwriter and playwright - the son of Douglas
C. & Janice Kapp Perry. After a two-year LDS mission to Antwerp,
Belgium, he attended Brigham Young University (BYU) and performed
world-wide with the Young Ambassadors. He has released 8 albums
of original music: - Newlight - Message In Motion - Far Into the
Heart - From Cumorah's Hill - Polly - a One-Woman Musical - Come
to the House of the Lord - This Is Jesus - The Trail of Dreams
And just released: - Reason to Sing - the Best of Steven Kapp
Perry and has been a frequent speaker for "Especially for Youth"
and "Best of Especially for Youth." His stories and songs have
appeared in "The Friend" and "The New Era" magazines. As part
of Peace Mountain MediaWorks, he helped create "The Scripture
Scouts," "Alexander's Amazing Adventures," and "The Allabouts"
with his co-writers Marvin Payne and Roger & Melanie Hoffman.
He loves music, cream cheese on bagels, his wife Johanne, and
whichever of their four children slept through the night.
Synopsis
ACT I
John Brown is having a dream. He is arranging books all in a row
-- old pioneer journals, lives over which, for many, he was captain
on the Mormon Trail. He has had this dream before, but this time
there is a mysterious woman, "a friend," who picks up
his book, drawing out his dreams and sorrows -- the loss of his
infant son and his passion for getting his people to the valley
alive. Pioneers, representing the 70,000 who crossed the plains,
emerge from over the horizon and take up the books, the lives
they will play, weaving from John Brown's memories of the 22-year
exodus a tapestry of their dreams and lives, now united across
time into one company.
The Grants, Jedediah and Caroline, and their daughter Caddie and
baby Margaret seek deliverance from persecuting mobs into a haven
for their family in the Rocky Mountains. Elsie Nielson dreams
of fulfillment for her husband, Jens, who left Denmark as a farmer
and has come to America to be a shepherd of souls, a father to
many more than their one little son and foster daughter Bodil.
Robert Pearce, a refugee from the factories of England, defies
the protective Captain Brown and his own hopelessly crippled body
by promising to walk every step of the way to Zion, to reach his
dream of being healed by the prophet.
Death is a frequent traveling companion along the deep-mud roads
of Iowa, but John Brown is encouraged by the mysterious woman,
Angela Hopewell, apparently a midwife, clearly a comforter. She
is present at births, at the blanket-sides of the sick, at the
accidental shooting of a young boy. While John wishes for the
guiding and guarding angels promised by prophets, Angela hovers
in urgent concern, but the sufferers she attends do not survive.
Pearce lags further behind each day and is saved by John Brown
from hungry wolves, but John is puzzled and alarmed to find Angela
there also, as if she were simply awaiting the outcome of the
attack. At the campfire that evening, Pearce's relieved friends
merrily compete in song, telling their own fanciful stories of
escaping Old Man Death. John realizes that their nemesis is not
a fearsome Old Man at all. He has met his hoped-for angel, and
she is the Angel of Death.
John orders Pearce to ride, but he is once again walking only
days after his rescue from the wolves. Struggling on in the passion
of his dream to take wing from his sufferings, he casts aside
his crutch, takes a few faltering steps unaided, and falls. It
is Angela who raises him to his full stature and dances him away
into another life.
With rations failing, John regroups the company -- determined
that no more will fall to Angela. But many stumble under privation
and sorrow, and Caroline Grant's baby falls ill with the cholera.
Angela cannot accept John's offer to sacrifice his own life in
trade for the safety of the pioneers, so he rides ahead to the
valley for help, leaving them to face the first falling snow in
the Wyoming highlands.
ACT II
John and the rescuers are interrupted in their return trip by
the burial of Margaret Grant, but John must break through the
complaints and worries of 1947, '53, and '59 to reach the desperate
handcart pioneers in '56.
They are in a hopeless stupor of of starvation and cold, and the
rescuers impose a forced march of fifteen miles, twenty-seven
hours, over Rocky Ridge, the highest point on the entire trail,
to get them to a sheltered camp, where Jens and Elsie Nielson
bury their son and foster daughter. Jens' feet freeze, and he
begs Elsie to leave him in the snow to die, and save her own life
Angela bars John from helping -- he watches as Elsie, declaring
the "Zion is together, sometimes you are helping others,
other times they are helping you," lifts her protesting husband
onto the cart and pulls him through the snow, with invisible help
from Angela.
John thinks he has won a victory, but hears little Caddie Grant
call out in alarm at her mother's collapse and his fears rise
again. "Will you take all the joy?" he cries, and Angela
catches John away to the top of Big Mountain, where, first among
the Mormon pioneers, he saw the Salt Lake Valley with Orson Pratt
in July of 1847.
There he is reminded of the joy of the Zion-dream, and witnesses
Angela's awe of the fierce unity of the 70,000 who followed that
dream into the valley below. He despairs of ever prevailing against
his enemy until she reveals that she was beaten long ago. "That's
the reason you can call me your friend." John submits to
Angela's "rescue" of the suffering Caroline Grant, trusting
Angela that "dreams are stronger than death." Caroline
whispers into the ear of her broken husband the dream they shared
at the beginning of the trail, to be all together in the valley,
then Angela dances her off. Jedediah bids farewell to Caddie and
turns back to retrieve his tiny Margaret. The company, bearing
Caroline's coffin, gather up their gear and march with solemn
joy over the last rise. As John Brown is about to crest that rise,
Angela invites him to join her in his final dance. And all enter
their valley of peace.
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