Orthodoxy

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. Nina Wilcox Putnam's daring one-act play turns a church service into a comic X-ray of human thought. While the congregation speaks in prayers, hymns, and polite ritual, the audience hears the private anxieties, vanities, resentments, and calculations churning beneath the surface of respectability. Putnam, writing from a childhood fascination with the gap between outward behavior and inner truth, insists the play is not anti-religious but a vivid exposure of human nature in a sacred setting. A cross-section of a small town fills the pews: the Sexton, the Minister's Wife, the Ancient Woman, the Land Agent, the Butcher, youths, girls, and choir members, all revealed as self-conscious, petty, or vain. At the center stands the Contralto, a rare figure of genuine feeling, and the village Idiot, who alone can see and speak with Pan, the pagan spirit of life, desire, and imaginative freedom. As the minister's sermon and announcements descend into hypocrisy, bureaucracy, and even praise of greed, Pan and the Idiot offer a joyful counterpoint of wonder and instinct. Darkly funny and sharply satirical, the play exposes the emptiness of social piety, the comedy of conformity, and the stubborn vitality of the inner life.