The Gallup-Healthway Well-Being Index, a survey of more than 350,000 Americans, ranked Utah as the happiest state in the country.
Mental Health America, the country's oldest independent mental health advocacy organization, ranked Utah the most depressed state in the country.
How do you see our pretty great state?
That's the introduction and the question being asked at Plan-B Theatre Company's, "And the Banned Slammed On."
The company's annual fundraising event just got bigger and more challenging.
"This would be the sixth year of 'SLAM' and the seventh year of 'Banned' so we wanted to be sure the events didn't become too predictable," said Plan-B producing director, Jerry Rapier.
"We started talking about how we could change it up, and we hit on this idea of combining them into one event."
"And the Banned Played On," came about "when we decided we needed something additional to raise funds," Rapier said. "It needed to be mission-based, and since we're a theater company, it needed to have a performance aspect to it."
"Banned," traditionally has tackled the issue of censorship, sharing excerpts of censored plays, books, songs and works of art.
This combined event will look at moments of censorship that happened this past year, right here in Utah. From Obama sock monkeys to the "Men on a Mission" calendar and Divine Strake to Utah's ban of fruity alcoholic drinks — the only state in the union to do so.
Then comes the "SLAM" portion of the event.
"You're really and truly at the center of the creative process," Rapier said of "SLAM," which gives playwrights, actors and design teams 24 hours to create a new short play.
The playwrights get their subject on Friday night and by Saturday morning they need to have scripts printed out and turned in so the cast and directors can get to work.
"We spend 23 hours putting something together and the audience spends one hour seeing the result," Rapier said.
So, for this year's combination event, the playwrights will be given their real-life moment of Utah censorship and will be asked to create not a dramatization of what actually happened, but to create something new and original, "sometimes the most difficult things, whether it be censorship or the economy or whatever, can be the most fertile ground for artistic work," Rapier said.
"And the Banned Played On" will have a cast of 15 veteran actors, five experienced directors and five playwrights, including Matthew Ivan Bennett, who wrote all of the plays for the company's 2008-09 season.
Other familiar returning faces are the hosts, KUER's Doug Fabrizio and X96's Bill Allred, who have both written blogs about their involvement at Plan-B's Web site.
"There's a very speicifc energy that's difficult to describe unless you've experienced it," Rapier said of the event, "there is really nothing else like it."
e-mail: ehansen@desnews.com
If you go...
What: "And the Slammed Played On," Plan-B Theatre Company
When: May 30, 8 p.m.
Where: Rose Wagner Center, 138 W. 300 South
How Much: $10-$40
Phone: 801-355-2787
Web: www.planbtheatre.org