Meet Lauren Noll of Honor, The Short Film in Hollywood

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren Noll.

Lauren, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up a Mormon in Appalachia. In Northeast Tennessee, where “what church do you go to?” could be an opening inquiry in a casual getting-to-know-you conversation, I was constantly dodging the question for fear that the person’s church had taught them I was in a cult. Even so, somewhere along the way, the teachings sunk in and I accepted the LDS Church to be the truth and founded my identity in those beliefs. I went to Brigham Young University, where I got a BFA in Acting. Of course, it was once I saturated myself with other Mormons, that I realized I was gay. So I started dodging a different question in conversation.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Most definitely not. At that time, my identity was being cracked open. I had been building this one puzzle my whole life that I was certain was the right and true and honest path, and suddenly I held a new puzzle piece that didn’t fit into my puzzle. I didn’t believe my new puzzle piece was wrong or bad, but it didn’t fit into what I already had. I had a very hard time scrapping the whole thing and starting over.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I am an actor. I have both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Acting. I’ve worked quite a bit in theatre and moved to Los Angeles after my MFA to transition into film and TV. This year, I’m venturing into writing and directing with my first short film, HONOR, which is a narrative film about a lesbian at BYU. They say, “write what you know.” The protagonist Laine is in the midst of a similar internal conflict to my own during the time when I had my first girlfriend while I was still in school. However, while she grapples with her own identity as she must restructure her belief system, she also faces what was my greatest fear of that year – she is turned into the Honor Code Office by her roommate and faces expulsion from the University when her graduation is just around the corner.

BYU students protested the Honor Code Office this year. If you don’t know much about BYU, suffice it to say a protest is a very unusual sight on that campus. Accepting guidance, rules, and consequences from authorities as an act of faith is the Latter-day Saint way. The protest was not necessarily a disagreement with the principles of the Honor Code. One can easily argue, “you decided to come here; you agreed to it,” forgetting that those are years during which young people change. The protest was rather a disagreement with the enforcement methods. Students have been baited and made to guess why they were brought in, invasively questioned about the very private and intimate physical details of their “violations”, investigated by means of questioning roommates/employers/ecclesiastical leaders about private affairs of others, and had punishments held over their heads sometimes with lesser punishments being offered in exchange for names of other “violators.” A snitching culture has been encouraged, and the Honor Code Office has been known to scour social media to find violators based on tweets or Instagram photos. A tank top? Come to the Honor Code Office. An old tweet with a swear word? Come to the Honor Code Office. This obviously does not foster an environment of honest personal discovery and growth, nor is it very Christlike. If you are lucky enough to be allowed to stay at the University, it often comes with a requirement to meet often with a counselor and keep a personal journal which must be submitted for review, so your remorse and repentance had better be convincing.

Hopefully, these protests will lead to lasting positive change at the University. Some small beginning steps have already been taken, though they are nowhere near enough. I am very proud to lend my voice to this moment with my inaugural film as a filmmaker. HONOR is a story rooted in my own experience and the realization of what was my greatest fear at the time. Furthermore, of the very limited amount of content out there exploring the LGBTQ experience in the LDS Church, most of it focuses on the gay male experience. I’m happy to be telling this story from the female perspective.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I would have started writing earlier!

Pricing:

• We are crowdfunding to raise the funds to make our film! Please consider supporting us by following HONOR on Seed and Spark, Instagram, and Twitter, as well as donating to and sharing our Seed and Spark campaign.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.seedandspark.com/fund/honor-1
• Email: [email protected]

Image Credit:
Matthew Tompkins

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