WHAT: "The Serpent: A Ceremony"

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 16 and 17, and Feb. 21, 22 and 23

WHERE: In the Wartburg Auditorium, located in the David A. Straz Jr. Center, at the north end of the Carthage College campus, 2001 Alford Park Drive, Kenosha

COST: Tickets are $12 for adults and $8 for students and senior citizens. They can be purchased by calling (262) 551-6661 or by e-mailing the theater at theatretickets@carthage.edu

INFO: Visit the Carthage Web site at http://www.carthage.edu/theatre

Audiences may recognize Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, as they appear on stage in this month's production of "The Serpent: A Ceremony" at Carthage College. The theatrical re-telling of their stories in this Obie award-winning piece, however, is not your typical Bible study.

Created during the socially and politically turbulent 1960s, "The Serpent" originated as an exploration of history and myth - including the biblical stories of the Garden of Eden and mankind's first sins - done in response to the assassinations of John F. and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. that took place from 1963 to 1968. It was written by Jean-Claude van Itallie in collaboration with the Open Theater - a New York City-based experimental theater group led by Joseph Chaikin in the '60s that developed radical, improvisational acting techniques in its exploration of political, artistic and social issues.

Theater students at Carthage became familiar with the methods of the Open Theater through a class taught by Neil Scharnick, and the end result of that class is their production of "The Serpent."

Then and now

While it is 40 years old, the basic concept and ideas of "The Serpent" are still very relevant today, Scharnick said.

"We haven't had a string of assassinations recently, but it seems to me that the world feels a little upside down right now," he said. "There is a lot of political unrest, and the world doesn't feel as safe as it ought to be."

In discussing such emotions with students in his class, Scharnick said many of them pointed to the series of natural disasters in recent years as adding to their feelings of unrest. Events such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the tsunami that hit Thailand in 2004 have helped to create a feeling that the world is "fallen" for many students, the director said.

Like the Open Theater did in the 1960s, Scharnick's class explored the issues before them in a series of exercises and workshops. Instead of focusing on the question of "Why does mankind kill his brother?" as participants in the Open Theater did for their production of "The Serpent," Scharnick's class explored questions such as "Why does God build towers and then destroy them?" and "Why does God allow the world to be flooded?"

Rather than giving answers to such questions, the Open Theater and its "Serpent" aimed to make people find new ways of questioning and to search for their own answers, Scharnick said. In that tradition, he and his students want their audiences to do the same,

"It really is a provocative piece."

It is also unconventional in form, as well as in content, Scharnick explained.

"It is more like a religious ritual than conventional theater," he said. "That's why the playwrights called it a ceremony, rather than a play. Instead of referring the people on stage as actors, they called them priests or celebrants."

Making it their own

The Carthage ensemble took what they learned in their workshops and developed some of their own sequences to add to the production, bringing "The Serpent" up to date. In the show's opening act, significant events throughout history are projected on two screens, while the actors explore their emotions through movement and sound on and off stage. Those events include everything from the day that 500,000 people marched for peace in Washington, D.C., in 1969, to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.

"The ensemble wrote about half of the play that audiences will see here," Scharnick said.

For Megan Hincks, a senior majoring in theater at Carthage, the entire experience has been "like nothing I've ever done before."

The Open Theater process is all about getting rid of your inhibitions and finding new things you can do with your mind and body, she said.

"In some ways, it has helped me more than any other class I've taken. It has allowed me to be a lot more open to taking risks on stage."

The class also gave Hincks the opportunity to explore the stories of the Bible in a non-spiritual way, she said.

"We were able to look at it as more of a story - one you can relate to no matter what you believe."

While it is rooted in a series of Bible workshops done by the Open Theater, "The Serpent" truly is an experience that people of all faiths can connect with, said Scharnick, who has taught at Carthage for four years and also did his undergraduate work there. Carthage is a Lutheran college, yet not everyone in the cast is Lutheran, or even Christian, he explained. And, that diversity has added to the richness of the production.

"This is not a play about God," he said. "What it is about is the human world."

Hincks said she hopes people in the audience will experience something similar to what she and the rest of the ensemble have in their work with "The Serpent."

"I hope it makes them think a little bit more about the kind of world we live in today," she said.

"Some people will leave the theater not quite sure of what they've seen," Scharnick said, "but no one will leave unaffected."