>>PREVIEW
EVE
Cappuccino Musical Theatre
and Broad Minds Productions
Runs until May 13
(Pumphouse Theatre)
When it comes to the story of Adam and Eve, director Tarra Lois Riley cannot say enough.
"I’m sorry – I’m in ‘director head.’ I’m being very profound," she laughs.
But all joking aside, Eve is a new look at an old story – a musical one.
"It’s an exploration of the original Genesis story. What was really, really exciting is that we started developing, as a collective, a kind of sensitivity of what stories we want to tell and we just explored," she says.
"We had originally thought, with a title like Eve, we were going to explore Eve’s story. And what actually happened is it turned out to be a story of Genesis from several points of view, and so the new title has become now – at least the working title that we are working with – Eden: a story of Consequence."
Sticking closely to the original Genesis story, Riley admits this telling is not about answering questions but merely about sparking debate and perhaps giving light to ideas that may not have been explored before.
"We want them (the audience) to look at stories, relationships, ideas about the original Genesis book in a new way. We want to really focus on changing the paradigm. There can be the opportunity for a paradigm shift or the opportunity for discussion. What Broad Minds does is we provide the forum for discussion. So we present unique points of view so that people can look at things in a new way."
However, Riley assures that audiences are not in for a lesson.
"I do want to make it clear it’s not a heavy piece. It is light, there is fun, there are jokes. It is a musical, but again, it’s just looking at things in a new way and exploring our feelings about what is traditional about what we associate with the Genesis story versus what we are kind of exploring," she says.
A research-based musical, the group chose to use many of the ideas from biblical scholarship rather than what is commonly taught and depicted in today’s society.
"The Tree of Knowledge is in a lot of biblical scholarships, both Judeo-Christian, Christianity and up to the Koran. The Tree of Knowledge of good and evil was actually a pomegranate tree. It’s represented to us now as an apple tree, but that only happened in the Middle Ages in Europe, because they didn’t know what a pomegranate tree looked like. But scholars saw it actually was a pomegranate tree, and we’ve gone back to one of the original interpretations," says Riley.
"It makes it a whole other undertone when you are invited to taste the pomegranate with its symbolism of sexual awaking," she adds.
It is not just the fruit that has been altered in this interpretation but the concept of responsibility and where that responsibility lies.
"One of the interpretations that has come down, at least in our discussions, was that Eve was blamed for the fall of mankind. Actually, in the Genesis story, it says that the serpent had basically tempted her to eat. She ate of the fruit, she then hands it to her husband. So they were not actually kicked out when Eve had eaten of the fruit. They were evicted from the garden once Adam had eaten it."
Riley says this is an important distinction.
"What we wanted to show was that in balance between the feminine and the masculine, and the respect between the two as beings, that’s when it kind of all works. The opening of knowledge, or the reawaking of knowledge, means that we have responsibility. And when we are getting farther and farther from that respect between the feminine and the masculine, that is when we lose our, if you will, equilibrium with the ‘divine.’" |
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