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Cinematic arts professor named finalist in screenplay contest with historical tale of Virginia woman

Darin Wales, a professor in Liberty University’s Cinematic Arts – Zaki Gordon Center, was selected as one of three finalists in the period/historical/war genre for his screenplay, “The Witch of Pungo,” in the Big Break Screenwriting Contest. His work was inspired by a true story from Virginia’s early history that he’s gradually worked to tell for close to a decade.

“The Witch of Pungo” is based on Grace Sherwood, a woman who lived in a Virginia town called Pungo (now part of Virginia Beach) and was wrongly accused of witchcraft by her neighbors in the early 1700s. Sherwood was “ducked” into a river, a supposed test of being a witch by throwing someone into the water to see if they would float, and imprisoned after she was found “guilty,” making her the only person to be convicted of such a thing in Virginia.

“This was about eight years after the Salem Witch Trials, so it was pretty fresh in people’s minds, and everything that went wrong in that village was blamed on her,” Wales said. “I was surprised that no one had done anything on it yet.”

The screenplay’s logline (a one-sentence summary) reads: “A prideful widowed mother of three must survive bitter accusations and potential drowning as an alleged witch to maintain her innocence in the face of superstitious villagers, the very people she longs to help.”

Wales began writing the script in 2011 while living in Virginia Beach and after hearing about the piece of infamous local history. He went on to use a draft of the script as his thesis project for his MFA at Queens University in Charlotte, N.C. Since then, and during his time at Liberty (he began teaching at Liberty in 2015), Wales has slowly added and made rewrites to the script.

Wales (left) directs actors in a scene for “The Witch of Pungo.” The screenplay has not yet been produced, but Wales submitted one filmed scene as part of his thesis work. View the scene here.

“The Witch of Pungo” screenplay has also been selected as a finalist at the Virginia Screenwriters Competition 2015, the Nashville Film Festival in 2018, and the Richmond International Film Festival in 2019 among multiple other contests. It was also rated #9 on Coveryfly’s Red List for Historical Feature Screenplays for the month of January 2021.

Wales has directed over 50 hours of episodic cable television for The Discovery Channel for such shows as “The New Detectives,” “The FBI Files,” and “Wicked Attraction,” and he was awarded the 2010 Virginia Filmmaker Award at the James River Film Festival for his short film “PLiNK.”

In addition to leading one of the cinematic arts department’s cohorts through which seniors in the program create short thesis films, Wales also regularly teaches entry-level screenwriting and directing courses.

The Big Break Screenwriting Contest is an online screenplay competition that accepts entries of feature film and television screenplays from anyone 18 years of age or older.

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