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The de Chardin Project
November 23, 2019 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
$10
A Love Story About the Origins of the Universe
The de Chardin Project is a play about Jesuit priest, scientist, and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). It won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play (Independent Category).
Silenced and exiled by the church, de Chardin, a renowned paleontologist, crossed continents searching for the missing link between his love for God and his love of Science. His groundbreaking discoveries in human evolution transcended barriers between Faith and Science. Today, his work is regarded as having changed the conversation about cosmology, evolution, and theology.
In the play, de Chardin, having suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, finds himself beyond the physical world and engaged with a mysterious guide who leads him on the ultimate adventure: the excavation of himself.
We are delighted to be joined by the playwright, Adam Seybold (son of ELPC members Kevin and Virginia Seybold), and his wife, actress Kate Fenton, for a dramatic reading of this fascinating exploration of life, science and faith!
Click here to purchase tickets online.
Review of the De Chardin Project from NOW Toronto (excerpted)
Science and religion are often on opposing sides, especially around something like the creationism vs. evolution debate. Adam Seybold’s The De Chardin Project offers up a fascinating real-life figure who defies any reductive labels.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest, a paleontologist and a geologist. When we first meet him, he’s stuck in a sort of limbo and being visited by a mysterious Death figure. Then we flash back to moments in his peripatetic life: digging for fossils in Egypt, fighting the Hun during WWI and, in Zhoukoudian, China, taking part in the expedition team involved in the historic Peking Man find. (The Death Figure) is present in each of these scenes, morphing effortlessly from a series of mothers to a frightened soldier to, in one of the most moving sequences, an American artist in love with de Chardin as the Japanese invade Peking.
Seybold’s beautifully detailed and suggestive script touches on biographical moments, but not in a pedantic way. It’s open-hearted and open-minded and complex, befitting a man with so many dimensions.
By Glenn Sumi
NOWToronto.com
December 3, 2014
