The Project

The Wineskin Project is a series of short read-aloud plays based on the Gospels that can be freely downloaded for use as Sunday school, church school or Bible study curriculum for high schoolers or adults. (You might also try them with your junior highers if, based on your knowledge of your particular kids, you think they would like them.)

The plays will be written with these goals in mind:

  • To dramatize the human reality (or humanize the drama?) behind these accounts that are too often completely spiritualized.
  • To spur discussion by raising questions and exploring oddities in the texts while trying as much as possible to avoid supplying any answers.
  • To conjure the mystery of that Kingdom not of this world, that calls us to an end we know not.

I'll be writing these plays in lectionary order. Upon this website's launch in April of 2013, plays covering every Gospel reading scheduled for the summer of 2013 in the Episcopal, Roman Catholic, or Revised Lectionaries (Year C, Propers 4-16) will be available right away, and I'll try from that point on to post new plays at least four months before their scheduled dates so that all the plays for each quarter of the Sunday School year can always be evaluated before that quarter begins.

Update (3-9-2023): I ended up completing plays for every Sunday in Lectionary years A, B, and C for the years 2013-2015. (Whew!) However, there could be uncovered Sundays in the years after that, due to Ordinary Time being different lengths for different years. If you're using these plays in lectionary order and see a Sunday coming for which there is no play, let me know as soon as you can and I'll try to whip one up for you. (Though it's been a long time since I wrote the last one!)

The Writer

Freeman Ng grew up in a conservative Bible church and went on to join the Episcopal Church as an adult. He wrote these plays while he was an Episcopalian. He's currently a devout atheist and might love these plays -- and blog posts! don't forget the blog posts -- even more now than when he wrote them.

Freeman is also the author of Joan, a novelization of the life of Joan of Arc, Basho's Haiku Journeys, a haiku picture book, Haiku Diem, a daily haiku feed, and Trumpbert, a webcomic parody of “Dilbert”.

www.AuthorFreeman.com

Joan

A novel of Joan of Arc

“An engrossing religious and historical account”

-- Kirkus Reviews

The Plays

(the blog)

Click on the titles to open the PDFs of the plays. Click on the “discuss” links to first read my blog post introductions to each play, or to comment on the plays after you've read them.

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