Jack Paul Sederholm

Jack Paul Sederholm (born 1940) is an American theatre director and academic.

Sederholm was raised in Seattle, Washington. He received a bachelor's degree in speech and dramatic arts from BYU. Sederholm received his Ph.D. from Wayne State University in 1974, writing his doctoral dissertation on the stage career of Hassard Short. Sederholm later served as the director of the Communication Arts Department of Elizabethtown College.

He served as director of the Hill Cumorah Pageant from 1978-1985. It was while he was director that the pageant shifted from having its cast largely consist of LDS missionaries in the Rochester New York mission augmented by mainly female BYU students to having no missionaries in the cast, and most of performers being Latter-day Saints living in the Eastern and mid-western United States. Another innovation Sederholm introduced was the use of standard costumes instead of relying on whatever the BYU drama department could provide.

Sederholm was a Latter-day Saint and involved in other local level church pageant productions besides his involvement in the Hill Cumorah Pageant. He was the brother of actor Jess Richards, who was originally named Richard Sederholm.

Sources

• History of the Hill Cumorah Pageant by Gerald Argetsinger.
• Another history of the Hill Cumorah Pageant by Argetsinger
• Ensign Dec. 1977, article on the appointment of Sederholm as director of the Hill Camorah Pafgeant
• Sederholm, Jack Paul (1974). The musical directing career and stagecraft contributions of Hassard Short, 1919-1952 (Dissertation, 621 pages). ETD Collection for Wayne State University. Paper AAI7513386.