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A SAMUEL FRENCH, INC. TITLE
10 Minute Play, Comedy / 1w, 1m, 1 any gender (adult)
Thornton Wilder
This short play, set in the Holy Land of Egypt, is part of Thornton Wilder's Playlets: Short, Short Plays for 3-5 Persons .
“The Holy Land. Egypt... From time to time there are auctions of the fittings that made up the old dime museums, and at such an auction you should be able to pick up a revolving cyclorama of the Holy Land and Egypt, which is the scenery for this piece...”
A loquacious donkey named Hepzibah, who moves along on her own time, stars in this comic drama as she transports Mary and the baby Jesus to Egypt and safety, with Joseph traveling along on foot. Hepzibah alternately complains, gossips, and talks about politics and religion–and from her mouth comes a cosmic question that foreshadows some of the recurring questions in Wilder’s drama and fiction: What is the relationship between reason and faith?
This short play is included in the collection Thornton Wilder's Playlets: Short, Short Plays for 3-5 Persons.
This comic piece was first published in The Angel That Troubled the Waters in 1928. In 1940, by then an internationally acclaimed playwright, Wilder wrote to his close friend Sibyl Colfax that this playlet was “one of the best things I was ever permitted to write.” The piece was inspired by the playwright’s boyhood experiences in church pageants, and by Hugo Wolf’s song “Nieu Wondre Maria.”
HEPZIBAH
OUR LADY
ST. JOSEPH
The Holy Land. Egypt.
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 ...