Beautifully crafted dialogue between a man and a woman who wake up nose to nose on the floor of a train to the West Coast. Syran quickly and deftly spins the audience into a lively, occasionally tense, but mostly genial debate about the origin of the earth and how science and religion are historically at odds with one another, though they can and do coexist, and certainly complement one another. Solid work. A great addition to any shorts festival.

Faith, by definition, cannot ever be explained in concrete terms. Science, on the other side of the coin, demands them. It can’t exist without them. Syran’s concise, chance meeting between two strangers prompts the challenging question, “but does any of that mean they have to disprove the other?” A beautiful dialogue in what is surely an encounter these two characters will never forget, and I’d say the same for an audience.

A cross country train ride sparks perhaps a bit of romance and a love of the earth from two very different perspectives. When Nora Louise Syran is doing the writing, you can be sure of an intelligent, thoughtful presentation. What we learn from her two strangers on a train is that science and faith can coexist. And both can be questioned (within reason). A charming story that will hopefully inspire similar conversations among audience members.