The Alley Theatre in Texas puts on Thornton Wilder's last, unfinished play, 'The Emporium'

For Kirk Lynn, it was like a scene from “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” He was in a library at Yale, nervously opening three bankers boxes. Inside were hundreds of pages of an unknown and unfinished play by the great playwright Thornton Wilder.

“My face just emotionally melted off,” Lynn says, laughing.

Lynn, a novelist, playwright and screenwriter who teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, went through the 360 handwritten pages and, with the blessing of the Wilder estate, finished the play, “The Emporium.”

The nine-scene work will make its debut at the Alley Theater in from May 10-June 2, capping a remarkable treasure hunt