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The Character as Text: On Being Read and Misread
Every character I have ever written or portrayed on stage has never belonged to me. That’s the secret. We build from scraps, molding habits, memories, desires into something new. And then hand them over to strangers who will decide, confidently, what they mean. A character is always read twice: once by the author, and again by everyone else. The first creates, the second dissects. Somewhere in between those two readings the truth gets smudged - sometimes valiantly, other time
Matthew Hand
Nov 134 min read


A Year of Theological Severity
I didn’t plan to write an entire body of work in a year. I only wanted to see if the soul could survive the page. Back in April, I had a loose idea for a story about faith and failure. I thought it would be one piece, maybe two. Then, something in me broke open — or perhaps tightened — and for the next several months, I wrote with the velocity of someone trying to outpace a confession. By November, I was staring at more stories than I knew what to do with. They weren’t drafts
Matthew Hand
Nov 74 min read


Cleaning Dirty Floors in a Haunted World
Kevin Lewis’s Willy’s Wonderland (2021) is easily dismissed as grindhouse schlock: Nicolas Cage versus murderous animatronics in a dilapidated family entertainment center. Yet beneath the blood and neon lies a startling parable about Christian life in a corrupted world. The film does not present Cage’s character as Christ himself, but rather as the model of what a Christian is called to be — steadfast, obedient, and unyielding in the face of evil. The nameless Janitor arrive
Matthew Hand
Sep 12 min read
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