Interview with American playwright Les Thomas
Today our guest is Les Thomas an American playwright traveling to Europe in early 2018 to continue researching Pontius Pilate for a stage play. We have conducted an interview with him. What brought you to write a play about Pontius Pilate? Why are you still researching his history? Seeing Basil Rathbone’s portrayal of Pontius Pilate in RKO Radio Pictures’ 1935 ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’ was life-changing! Rathbone’s Pilate displayed such evocative guilt at his actions that I was crying for his pain; Jesus was literally out of the frame (for those who've seen the film know Jesus is never fully shown in a literal frame of the print but remains one of his most powerful filmic “appearances”). And so during Lent of 2014, I wrote a full-length play entitled ‘Acts of Pilate’ based largely off apocryphal texts examining Pilate’s role during The Passion. To me, it fell flat as a work in the art of the drama. This was roundly the critical consensus. To my surprise, it found mos...