Peoples Temple in the Arts 2018

Rebecca (“Becky”) Beikman working with a student in school on reading.

A number of musicians, writers, dramatists, and filmmakers have completed – or are still working on – many creative projects which consider the people of Peoples Temple and the events in Jonestown. The articles below describe those projects, introduce the creative forces behind them, and consider how they perceive their own work.

  1. Art Notes 2018
  2. The Role of the Arts in Examining Jonestown, by Ken White
  3. Books and writing projects
    1. Beautiful Revolutionary Published
      1. So I Wrote A Cult Novel, by Laura Elizabeth Woollett
      2. Reading Evelyn, Finding Carolyn, by Kathy Sparrow
      3. More a Whisper Than a Shout, by Rikke Wettendorff
      4. This Is Not a Beach Book, by Jennifer Kathleen Gibbons
      5. Revolutionary Beauty, by Katherine Hill
    2. Blue Smoke & Mirrors Published
      1. Why I Wrote Blue Smoke & Mirrors, by Arnold M. Ludwig
      2. Bearing Witness to Tragedy, by Matthew Fulmer
      3. Manipulation, Mirrors and Mind Control, by Robert Westlake
      4. When “Because” Is Enough, by Bulent Atalay
    3. And Then They Were Gone Finally Published, by Judy Bebelaar
    4. A Belated Response to a Negative Review, by Tom Mrett
    5. The Song of the Suicides: Revisiting the Jonestown tragedy, by Salvador Hernáez
      1. La canción de los suicidas: Una nueva mirada a la tragedia de Jonestown
    6. Nesci Book Offers Psychoanalytic Portrait of Jim Jones, by Rebecca Moore
    7. Hungarian Novelist Takes on American Tragedy, by Hegedűs Máté
    8. Writing a Memoir, Making a Re-Introduction, by Eugene Smith
    9. A Fork in the Road: Jim Jones or Charles Manson, by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
  4. Documentaries and films
    1. Making a Jonestown Documentary, by Thaddeus Bouska
    2. Examinations of A&E’s Jonestown: The Women Behind the Massacre
      1. Compromised Enablers, by Jason Dikes
      2. Filling in Gaps in Jonestown Video with Re-Enactments, by Bonnie Yates
        1. On the Use of Actors and Re-enactments in Documentaries, by Bonnie Yates
      3. Cue the Kool-Aid: Watching Jonestown Docs in the ‘Fake News’ Era, by Rebecca Moore
  5. Theater and Opera
    1. Bloodlines to Oblivion: A Playwright’s Retrospective, by Jamal Williams
    2. Bloodlines: An Unfulfilled Premise, by Aaron Duggan
    3. Bloodlines: A Jonestown Subtext to a Family in Disarray, by Annie Dawid
    4. Getting there … The Christine opera keeps growing, by Perry Townsend
  6. Music
    1. The Accidental Creation of “Raga Jonestown”, by Malcolm Tent
  7. Art
    1. Art as a Bridge between Jonestown and Modern Life, by Lorenzo Bacci
  8. Podcasts
    1. Hearing More Voices: Creating the Second Season of Transmissions From Jonestown, by Shannon Howard
    2. The 2018 Peoples Temple podcast review, by Jason Dikes