The Plays

In a Distant Country

This was my first full length play. It was 1994 and I was in the middle of Seminary, writing short plays for use in church worship services when a friend approached me with a request. "Write me a Christian comedy," he said. "One that isn't insipid and stupid."

I was, and still am, a big fan of Sonheim's "Into the Woods", and the idea to do the same kind of tight interweaving of stories that you think you know really appealed to me. So I took a bunch of parables of Jesus and linked them together in a modern day setting. The end result, I hope, is a fun and light show that anyone can enjoy and that has deeper levels for those who are familiar with the original source material.

It's a fun show and audiences responded well to it. As a first time playwright and director I was gratified to hear one person say that they thought it ran for under an hour, when it ran a little over an hour and a half.

The only problem I have with it is the final scene with Tass, which is the only time that the play becomes explicitly Christian. It's not reflective of my current thinking, but it resonates with the original source material and changing it would be a disservice to the play, I think. Besides, unlike George Lucas, I feel like there is a time when you declare a particular piece of art "done" and quite futzing with it.

An evaluation copy can be downloaded here.

posted by Dan Wilson @ 11:42 AM