Description
Book SynopsisSharp, thoughtful and mysterious,
How the World Began is a powerful story about an outsider in a close-knit, devastated community.Susan, a science teacher from Manhattan, starts work in a small rural Kansas town that''s been ripped apart by a tornado. When one of her pupils - the damaged, articulate Micah - takes offence at an off-the-cuff remark about how life on Earth began, Susan is thrown into an ethical firestorm about science and faith that leads to her fearing for her safety.Casting light on the tension between religion and secular liberalism,
How the World Began explores the debate between creationism and evolution, and how this is taught in schools. With hints of American classics like
Inherit the Wind and
The Catcher in the Rye, the play traces the inexorable, fatalistic momentum from a single casual act into an all-encompassing dispute. A dispute which then threatens the very foundations of a community still reeling from a colossal disaster. I
Trade ReviewCatherine Trieschmann's gripping three-hander is very much in a tradition of American issue plays such as David Mamet's
Oleanna and Rebecca Gilman's
Spinning into Butter... The cleverness of this piece...is that its central drama is not about science versus creationism, but about faith and faithlessness, the gap between east-coast liberalism and small-town America, and about the way we dismiss other people's points of view. -- Lyn Gardner * Guardian *
Faith and science collide in one small room, and sparks fly spectacularly in this drama by the American writer Catherine Trieschmann... The play is gripping, disturbing and relevant... Trieschmann's writing is taut and laced with irony. -- Sam Marlowe * The Times *
