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A SAMUEL FRENCH, INC. TITLE
10 Minute Play, Drama / 1w, 2m
Thornton Wilder
This short play, set on Judgment Day in the swirling waters of the Atlantic abyss, is part of Thornton Wilder's Playlets: Short, Short Plays for 3-5 Persons .
“Atlantic abyss... The clangor of Judgment Day’s last trumpet dies away in the remotest pockets of space...”
Judgment Day is upon the world! As the moment of utter extinction arrives, three characters are swaying in the waters deep in the Atlantic. Although long dead, they are still wrestling with earthly identities and passions. What a crew! — An Empress of Newfoundland, a theatre producer, and a Christian priest. How will it end for this curious bunch?
This work, written in 1923, is one of only four Wilder playlets composed after he graduated from college. The title is drawn from Revelations 20:13. “And the sea gave up the dead in it…and all were judged by what they had done.” One critic, Donald Haberman, sees hints of Our Town here in the fact that the characters are “slowly liberating” their minds from “the prides and prejudices and trivialities of a lifetime.”
This short play is included in the collection Thornton Wilder's Playlets: Short, Short Plays for 3-5 Persons.
Wisconsin Public Television in cooperation with the University of Wisconsin and the Milwaukee Repertory Company, televised this piece in March 1978 with three other playlets in a show titled Producing the Unproducible.
Atlantic abyss.
Thornton Wilder: It's Time
Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) is the only writer to win Pulitzer Prizes for both drama (Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth) and fiction (The Bridge of San Luis Rey). He collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock on Shadow of a Doubt, hiked the Alps with the heavyweight boxing champion ...