SHEFFIELD — Tom Truss was chatting with a friend after seeing her in a particularly bad Christmas play when he blurted out, “I can write a better play blindfolded, or dead, or with my hands behind my back.”

The friend was quiet for a moment before pointedly telling Truss, “Well, then do it.”

Six years later, Truss, a multi-hyphenate theater artist, has an answer for her: his new play “Replacing Prancer,” which is premiering with a staged reading, 3 p.m. Dec. 8 at Dewey Hall and 7 p.m. Dec. 14, at The Foundry in West Stockbridge.

“It took a while for [the play] to happen because COVID and all kinds of things,” Truss said in an interview with The Eagle. “But this is what came out after many versions, and having various people read it.”

Truss, who lives in Great Barrington, has worked extensively as an actor, dancer and educator. He’s choreographed local high school musicals and, as a writer, he’s developed “ReWritten,” a devised dance play about Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

“And I’d done solo shows but I’d never sat down like, ‘I’m going to have eight characters and let me do the plot and the dramatic action.’ I’d never done that,” Truss said. “But I didn’t wake up one day going, ‘I want to write a play about Christmas.’ I had extraordinary Christmases as a kid. It was a big ritual and tradition in my family, so I have many fond memories of doing the more commercial, ‘let’s go buy a tree,’ and also of being in choirs at my church and learning all kinds of songs and hymns.”

He’d never thought about what he wanted to see from a Christmas play, however, until his friend challenged him to write one.

Truss remembers thinking, “I’m tired of seeing Santa onstage. I want the play to be from a different perspective, I want there to be some kind of conflict because it’s a play,” he said. “I also wanted to look at what Christmas is now, and what it’s become, and to have a slight comment on that, but also to be fun.”

Then, an idea came to him: The play would open with Santa’s reindeer — from Clement Moore’s 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” which begins “‘Twas the night before Christmas…” — in their break room.

“It’s the reindeer everyone knows — or doesn’t! — from Clement Moore’s poem, coming back from their vacation, and they can’t fly, and Santa freaks out and says, ‘Go away. You have two weeks because you’ve forgotten the meaning of Christmas,’” Truss said.

After writing that initial scene, Truss brought it into a friend’s English classroom at Monument Mountain Regional High School; he’d choreographed school productions, and wanted to hear students read the beginnings of the play aloud.

“Let’s just see if you like the characters,” Truss told the kids beforehand. The students loved the scene, with multiple asking Truss what happened to these characters next.

He paused before answering, “Uh, I actually don’t know.” And so, he got to work answering that question.

Eventually, he had a whole play.

“I’ve made hundreds of works, from 45-minute ballets to half-hour solo shows, and I actually think this is very good. I’m really proud of it, and I don’t say that about a lot of my work,” Truss said.

Six months ago, Truss gathered professional actors to read the entire play, so he could hear the whole thing out loud for the first time.

“At the end of the reading, everyone said, ‘When are we going to actually do this?’ Which I was totally surprised and inspired by,” Truss said. “And that’s when I contacted the folks at Dewey Hall and The Foundry.”

He knew that each individual organization might not be able to afford staging the play on its own. But Truss thought that if they teamed up and maximized their resources, the two organizations could do a full production for Christmas 2025.

“We’re testing the waters this year. We’re generating interest and support and getting one last bit of feedback before there’s a final version of the play,” Truss said, on this year’s readings. “I’m going to be watching and listening. One of my intentions is to go in there and not watch as an actor or as a director but as a playwright. That’s very new to me.”

At each performance, there will be a form for audiences to write down their thoughts on the play. There will also be a brief talkback after each performance, where the audience will lead the way.

“It’s for anybody who wants to stay afterwards for 15, 20 minutes to give me feedback to help shape the final version of the play,” Truss said.