By Jessica Miller, Asst. Layout Editor
One lemming. A society that thinks everything is black or white. One lemming. People who have trouble being sympathetic or empathetic. The Serpent is a play that addresses the kind of previously mentioned actions. A play that embodies human actions and follies, and addresses them so the audience has no choice but to critically think while not watching, but experiencing.
The Serpent is not the average play. There are no props, costumes are dehumanized in a way that the entire cast wears black and there is very minimal to no make-up. Not the usual play in any sense, but that is the point. The Serpent is not meant to entertain, give hope, nor smiles. Rather, The Serpent is to be an eye-opener into the actions humans have taken since the days of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to the pain and suffering that is occurring in modern times. Humans contribute more
problems to the world because of greed, pride, envy, lust, racism, bullying, and numerous other sins that are more destructive such as societal sins, such as the tragedy that is genocide.
The play is set to be after the Vietnam War; a time of great tragedy and confusion. People wanted to be different, to break free, and discover what freedom really is. All the while a war was going on. This is where The Serpent starts, with an autopsy of a body. The cast slowly takes the body apart separating what makes a human a human, physically at first, but then the play breaks away to the next scene and goes deeper than flesh. The actors use storytelling of some famous events in history that had great tragedy. All the sins of these tragedies or then related to the first temptation, an apple tree in the Garden of Eden. The cast does not have roles, rather they embody identities that every human can relate to. The play breaks down each event like the story of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel into the sources of pain and suffering that are within those stories into scenes of pure words and emotions. This is to give the audience an understanding of how human folly has developed throughout years and years.
“Blind man’s hell scene when we were doing a confession was one of the most powerful scenes in the play because it makes you think, ‘what am I ashamed of?” Said senior Heather Galvin.
The Serpent is intended to make one really think about their place in the world, and how they are slowly shaping it because of their individual actions. The play goes further to point out that when many thoughts combine into one strong direction that society has, it really shapes the treatment of others.
The societal ‘norms’ can be very dangerous if they are something that is harmful to others. There is a scene that is quite powerful compared to the others, which could be referenced as “One Lemming.”
A lemming is a small rodent. It has a migration pattern that moves it in masses of hundreds and thousands. The lemmings will try to cross land only, but, when the time comes, being adept swimmers, will jump carelessly off of cliffs into water in order to reach their destination. They are often confused with the thought that they are committing mass suicides, but it is not so. However, lemmings can be compared quite well to humans. One lemming, or one human, gets an idea and sends it off to the masses. It then convinces the others that its idea is good and true and takes that one with it and that one gathers another, and another till there is a huge migration of one thought or feeling. The mass becomes such a strong drawl, that the individuals start to stop questioning why they do something, and just do it,
even if it means running off a cliff. This one thought can be like how the serpent gave a thought to Eve, and Eve gave a thought to Adam.
“I felt we [Humans] needed it,” said the director of The Serpent and Professor David McGinnis talking about humans needing that play at this point in history, so that we can see the suffering they have created from selfish ideas and stop suffering from continuing.
The cast of The Serpent receive numerous insights, as did the audiences that experienced the play in one of the many locations the cast performed. The reason for the multiple locations, according to McGinnis, is to prove that a set and props are not needed in order to produce great and memorable work. In addition, it also forces numerous people, who did not see the whole play for one reason or another, to see snippets of it, and get some kind of a ‘this is something that is happen’ experience as students and staff walked by on their way to somewhere.
The Serpent created many memories for those that had any experience with the play; everyone gets something unique out of it and enjoys the real-life lesson feeling, compared to pure entertainment. In time, with the insights that have been gained, hopefully, people will bring it forward and create a brighter future for all.
