Old Testament, new way to tell it

By Catherine Amos

Published: May 8, 2008

The lights go out; the stage is dark. A recording of chanting monks plays as 15 students, head to toe in black, make their way from the rear of the auditorium to the stage. Only their hands are visible from the tiny lights they carry, resembling fireflies swirling in the summer sky.

Once on stage, the group arranges into a formation as a red light washes over the stage for the opening scene of “Pandora’s Dream,” Culpeper County High School’s spring play directed by drama teacher Maggie Lawrence.

The play draws from excerpts of Genesis, the play “The Serpent,” and the story of Pandora, resulting in an intense and thought-provoking ensemble performance, which Lawrence assembled as a single script with collaboration from students.

There is not much dialogue, but rather narration of the first two Genesis stories from a chorus trio. The three girls take Pandora through the stories of Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel, showing the downfall of humanity and the hope of the future.

“Being an ensemble piece, this is not about any one character,” Lawrence said.

Pandora arrives on stage between scenes from Genesis, a chorus of unsettling voices echoing responses to her inner dialogue. The background ensemble creeps around the stage in fluid, dance-like movements.They appear throughout the 30-minute play, taunting both Pandora and Eve to question their thoughts. In the Garden of Eden, the group acts as a single entity, slithering and speaking as an inferred snake.

They tempt Eve to taste the fruit, then separate and slink over and around her, echoing her responses to their inquiries. They even form the tree with their bodies as they convince Eve to disobey God, grabbing hold of her, proving she would not die from touching its limbs.

When Cain murders his brother, Abel, the group depicts acts of violence amid the sounds of warfare and the flashing of a strobe light, representing “the evils that have been turned loose, spawning all murders,” according to Lawrence.

Following the destruction, the play ends in a moment of hope, a rebirth of humanity.

Senior Victoria Steimel portrays Eve in “Pandora’s Dream,” and said she enjoyed working on this piece with her class.

“We took part of it from an actual script,” Steimel, 17, said, “but we came with our own ideas and did the directing and staging all ourselves. We added parts to it and made it our own. A lot of it is not necessarily lines, but movements and repetition.”

Steimel said she hoped people would like “Dream,” even though it is not the typical spring play fare.

“It’s much different from a regular play,” she said. “It’s a different way of acting. We have to be more serious — our class has a lot of comedians but it’s a serious play. You have to get into it and I hope the audience will feel what we’re feeling.”

Catherine Amos can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 138 or .