The story of the French priest and paleontologist who discovered Peking Man with Canadian Davidson Black is much more than a biography on stage.
"It's about the story of the origins of the universe," Seybold told The Catholic Register. "It's about matter and space and the confluence of those two things. And Teilhard's notion that the cross is a physical symbol of that synthesis of matter and spirit — that the world of matter is the horizontal line and the world of the spirit is the vertical line."
De Chardin was a brilliant and controversial thinker who articulated the first positive Christian response to evolutionary theory. He died in relative obscurity in New York in 1955 at 73, but today his thoughts on cosmology and evolution form the basis of contemporary Catholic theologies of the environment.
Seybold's drama was itself born in a real life drama of joy and tragedy. The 35-year- Getting to the heart of Teilhard de Chardin old actor and his three-person company, The Quickening Theatre Company, took on the project as a Vancouver Fringe Festival entry in the fall of 2011 because one of the three thespians, Ginette Mohr, was pregnant. They needed a play Mohr could direct and Seybold and his wife Kate Fenton could act in. It took Seybold eight days to write the first draft.
Over the summer, Fenton discovered she was pregnant. The Fringe production went ahead, but then Fenton lost the baby. Continuing to work on the play became a way for the couple to focus their energy and attention elsewhere. They were invited to workshop the play at Grove City College in Pennsylvania in the spring of 2012.
Things went better for Fenton the second time around. When a full production of the play finally appears at the Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace Feb. 7 to 17, Seybold and Fenton's son Henry will be two-and-a-half months old.
"For a play about the origins of the universe, for us it's tied deeply into participation in the process of creation," said Seybold.
Teilhard Facts:
- Born 1881 into a privileged family in Orcines, France.
- Enters Jesuit novitiate 1899, goes on to study philosophy on the island of Jersey, teach at a Jesuit college in Cairo, Egypt, study theology in Hastings, England.
- Ordained 1911 in Hastings.
- Enters the First World War as a stretcher-bearer with the 8th Moroccan Light Infantry. Decorated with the Croix de Guerre.
- By 1922 he has his PhD in geology from the Institut Catholique in Paris.
- On an expedition to the Ordos Desert in China he writes the Mass On The World.
- In1937 the New York Times introduces him to the world as the Jesuit who believes that man descended from monkeys.
- By 1940 he finishes writing The Phenomenon of Man but is denied permission to publish. For many years the mimeographed manuscript passes among Jesuits and other scholars.
- In 1950 he is named to the French Academy of Sciences.
- Dies on Easter Day, April 10, 1955.
- 1957 the Holy Office (now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) forbids his books from being kept in libraries, including those of religious institutes. Nor were Catholic bookstores allowed to sell works by de Chardin.
- In 1962 the Holy Office issues a monitum or reprimand denouncing his theology.
The play about the man who made evolution a theological idea — to the dismay of the Holy Office — is also the product of Seybold's own spiritual evolution.
Seybold grew up among conservative, even fundamentalist, Protestants in western Pennsylvania.
"I moved away from the Church for a while, because I didn't think it matched up to my experience of reality," said Seybold.
Seybold and his wife are back at a liberal Protestant church and discovering that faith is more than angry denunciations.
"Belief in God, in this day and age given the way those of us are viewed who do believe in God, it gives me a context for suffering. It gives me a context for my joy, too," Seybold said. "It gives me a context where I can say, 'This isn't the end of the story.' It allows me to deal with tragedy in my life."
Seybold is convinced de Chardin is a thinker who can speak to people who are wary of the Church and tired of fundamentalism in religion, politics and culture.
"Teilhard's message of moderation and inclusion, still being deeply scientific and being deeply faithful, a lot of people can relate to that," he said. "(For de Chardin) it's possible to not have your head buried in the sand whether you are a scientist or a person of faith."
For Catholics, de Chardin has something profound to say about Christ and creation, said Stephen Scharper, a University of Toronto professor of religion and environment.
"St. Paul in Romans talks about all creation groaning as it gives birth to this new reality — a sense of creation is involved in Jesus' arrival, the Christ-event," Scharper said. "Teilhard sees that, puts it into an evolutionary perspective and he also lifts the narrative from simply an earthly story to a universal story… He's so important because he is a scientist. He believes in evolution and he connected the salvation story with the evolution of the universe. The evolution story and the salvation story of the whole universe are part of the same narrative."
As a dramatist, Seybold has to use events in de Chardin's life to get at the theological insights. From his discovery of Peking Man in the Gobi Desert of China in the 1920s to his struggle to publish his major theological work, The Phenomenon of Man, in the 1940s, there's plenty of drama in the life of this scholar-priest.
"The notion he had a heart attack right at the time he was trying to publish The Phenomenon of Man and was being blocked by Rome. His heart literally broke," said Seybold.
"I see him like Moses. He's shown the promised land, but he can't go in."
If there's anything the audience can take away from this night at the theatre, Seybold hopes it's to get past a false split between science and religion.
"Science is the question of how we got here and religion is the question of why we got here. They're not necessarily at odds."
Tickets to The De Chardin Project are $15-$25, available at www.artsboxoffice.ca or by calling (416) 504-7529. Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace is at 16 Ryerson Ave.