I cheated in this play about Jesus’ appearance before Pontius Pilate. I lifted the entire scene, almost verbatim, from “Jesus of Montreal“, one of my ten favorite movies of all time. (A movie I’ve watched every year around Easter with a different friend or grouping of friends for over 20 years now!) If that leads a single reader to go on to watch the movie, this play will have accomplished its purpose.
That left the play at only 400-something words, though, and I’ve been keeping to a range of 1800-2200 words for every play, so I added scenes before and after exploring the doom of Pilate and that other well-meaning engineer of Jesus’ fate: Judas Iscariot. I had no basis in the original story for my takes on these two figures — well, a little for Pilate — but I went ahead and followed my usual Wineskin Project practice of portraying the usual Sunday School villains in the best (or at least most thought provoking) light.