Diana (Nadya Anderson, left) and Shane Stevens (Alan Arias) face the consequences after sneaking away from a camp bonfire.
Some people’s lives appear to be forgone conclusions. If you’re a Kennedy from Massachusetts, for example, politics and public service likely appear on your horizon.
For former Madisonian Ben Mulhern, his artistic trajectory — and his current project — were heavily influenced by his past.
By age 16, Mulhern had already published a short story and a short play, which was performed at the former Brave Hearts Theatre. Mulhern’s early flowering was assisted by parents Marty Mulhern, a teacher, and Marcy Weiland, an early Isthmus employee, who met while performing together at Broom Street Theater.
“I wasn’t originally sure where I wanted my life to go,” says Mulhern, who graduated from East High School in 2000. “But you can only dodge the inevitable for so long, given the parents I have.”
It was the two summers Mulhern spent as a counselor at Camp Anokijig — a Native American word meaning “we serve” — in Plymouth, Wisconsin, that provided the fodder both for the TV pilot and his eventual career as an educator. Mulhern teaches language arts and theater at the Art and Science Academy in Isanti, Minnesota.
“The experience not only informed the TV show but got me wanting to be a teacher,” says Mulhern, who reignited Camp Anokijig’s dormant amateur theatrical program and wrote mini-plays for the campers to perform. After graduating from UW-Madison, Mulhern, who also drummed in a rock band, moved with his bandmates to St. Paul and eventually earned his master’s degree in education.
In 2015, Mulhern’s father forwarded a link for a Freedom From Religion Foundation contest calling for a film or TV screenplay featuring “a likeable atheist.” Mulhern called on his camp counselor experience and worked with his father to create the character of Shane Stevens, a theatrically inclined atheist camp counselor at Believers Bible Camp.
Mulhern’s pilot script, The Heathen Shane Stevens, didn’t win first prize — that went to Thank God, I’m an Atheist, with a title pulled from Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s familiar aphorism — but it attracted attention from Minneapolis filmmaker Maria Carrera, owner of sureCAN productions. A Food Network veteran and family friend, Carrera agreed to the project if Mulhern could raise the necessary funds.
Mulhern utilized Seed & Spark, a crowdfunding source for film and television projects, to raise $19,000. That got the project off the ground and in front of the cameras. Production began in 2018, with Mulhern directing his own script.
Shane Stevens, Mulhern’s alter ego played by Argentine American actor/director Alan Arias, is a smooth-talking camp counselor who largely ignores his charges. He compensates for lack of ability with robust enthusiasm and likeability — and no one knows he’s an atheist.
One morning at 3 a.m. Stevens is called before Rae Dunster (Debby Montague), the head of Believers Bible Camp, to answer for three transgressions from earlier that evening. The interaction sets the stage for an interesting summer.
The pilot — screened for friends, family and financial backers in Minneapolis on Sept. 26 and in Madison at the Memorial Union Play Circle on Sept. 27— sets the stage for eight to 10 additional episodes that Mulhern already has outlined. Characters and relationships evolve, roles reverse, and Stevens may even have his own epiphany, causing him to question his atheism, Mulhern says.
In early October, Mulhern and Carrera will take the film to Duluth, Minnesota, for the Catalyst Content Festival, aimed at developing new television projects. The pilot already has been sent to SXSW Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas. And Mulhern shared it with a friend who works for a Warner Brothers-affiliated production company for possible consideration.
“I have other concepts I’ve been working on,” Mulhern adds, “but I will be putting most of my energy into the pilot’s next steps.”
