Acts of Grace

Religious themes are scattered throughout Craig Wright’s work, but if you ask the award-winning dramatist and TV writer if that’s intentional, the answer will be a resounding no. A graduate of United Theological Seminary in Minnesota and a former United Methodist pastoral intern, Wright primarily earns his living as a writer for the acclaimed HBO series Six Feet Under. While the label "Christian writer in Hollywood" doesn’t comfortably fit Wright, you wouldn’t dismiss him as non-Christian either. Like many writers in the secular domain, he is compelled to ask religious questions without having them define him or his work.

"With each play, I approach whatever is most interesting," the 39-year-old Wright says. "Quite often, the language of religion is a quick way to cut to the chase, to the most important things."

Wright’s work has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and an Emmy award. His latest play, Grace, looks at questions of faith, God’s will, and time through the lives of an evangelical Christian couple transplanted from Wright’s native Minnesota to the Florida gold coast. Wright says he looked again at John Calvin’s classic Institutes of the Christian Religion as he thought about the theological arguments of the play. One of the main characters, Steve, believes he knows God’s will but is destroyed when things don’t turn out as he planned.