The De Chardin Project

Maev Beaty & Cyrus Lane in The De Chardin Project by Adam Seybold. Photo by Michael Cooper.

Adam Seybold’s thoughtful and intellectually challenging The De Chardin Project takes audiences on a whirlwind tour of the highlights of the controversial life of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 to 1955). A brilliant Jesuit priest who was equal parts theologian, paleontologist and geologist, de Chardin lived a colourful life during a pivotal era. His exploits included excavating ruins in both Egypt and China (where he was part of the team that discovered the Peking Man), and a stint as a stretcher-bearer in the First World War.

Seybold’s script renders the intangible tangible, portraying the adventurous inner and outer life of a deeply spiritual man as a series of vivid slice-of-life flashbacks that defy time and space. Thematically centred on the tension between the spiritual and material realms, the play favours epistemological questions and places heavy emphasis on the supposedly hostile impasse between science and religion. De Chardin is positioned as a passionate advocate for the integration of science and religion in opposition to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. This aspect of the play is a little anachronistic, as it was actually de Chardin’s unorthodox take on the doctrine of Original Sin, and not his fondness for science that got him into hot water with Rome.

Cyrus Lane is utterly convincing as de Chardin, bringing to life a brilliant man with a keen sense of fun who all the same never wavers from his deeply held moral convictions. Maev Beaty’s many talents are on full display as she plays every other character in the play, morphing effortlessly from de Chardin’s elusive spiritual guide, to a WWI soldier, to de Chardin’s (platonic) love interest Lucille Swan, an American divorcee he spent a great deal of time with in China. Beaty shines as Lucille, a fiery modern woman who challenges de Chardin on some of his (and the Church’s) most deep-seated and unconscious assumptions, namely that male is the default sex, and that physical love relationships are inferior to those of a platonic nature. Their love story is an unconventional one.

Alan Dilworth’s directing effectively conjures a sense that the two actors are indeed perched on the precipice of the infinite. The monastically spare set—an elevated stage filled with trapdoors, framed by beams conspicuously devoid of walls—and understated lighting reinforce the sense that the action is taking place somewhere between the earthly and spiritual realms that de Chardin loved so much.

The De Chardin Project runs until December 14 at Theatre Passe Muraille. Visit passemurailled.ca for more information and to buy tickets.