The Second Shepherd’s Christmas

The medieval theatre meets the American West in this one-act rambunctious holiday play.  The story is an embellished adaptation of a fifteenth-century liturgical drama, curiously titled “The Second Shepherds’ Play.” Though the language and the references have been updated several centuries, the robust poetic structure remains.  The western setting also sheds light on a little-known chapter of American history: the war between the cattlemen and the sheepherders. The trouble begins when a stowaway lamb turns up in “cattle only” country; there are those who seek to harm it, those who seek to steal it, and those who seek to preserve it. A mysterious stranger interrupts the farcical antics, however, when she leads the three cow-punch protagonists on a new search—the search for self.  The play concludes with an outpouring of giving and forgiving, framed against the tender backdrop of the first Christmas.  The characters include bungling ranchers, Basque sheepherders, a silver-tongued con artist, his wife, and their three devilish daughters. Community theatre groups will love the thematic universality; high school directors will be able to reuse the scripts in the classroom.