The madness begins …

First, there was a bang. And then all hell broke loose.

These two statements simultaneously describe a popular theory of how the universe began and serve as a nutshell synopsis of Creation Stories, the latest offering from Chico State’s School of the Arts, which premiered Tuesday evening at Wismer Theatre.

Though billed as a play, Creation Stories is better described in more vague terms as a theatrical production, as it leans more heavily on music, projected photography and video, sound, and choreographed movement than narrative and plot development. The driving story arc—in which the players act out cultural creation stories as a character named Spirit (Zachary Hansen) tries to convince his sassy friend Science (Brittney Nusbaum) that there’s more to the universe than cold hard facts—is secondary to the individual origin myths, which are told through wide-ranging mediums including dance, mime, shadow puppetry and comedy.

In short, it’s more like a mind-fracking existential variety show than what most people traditionally call a play. There is a whole lot going on during these creation stories, with a dozen or so dancer/movers appearing and disappearing from different entrances nearly constantly, half of whom can be caught undulating, slithering, crawling or slow-motion somersaulting at any given moment as other characters randomly spout quotes by the likes of Mark Twain and Mahatma Gandhi.

All of this madness is by design, as the whole work is a collaborative attempt at experimental theater. Creation Stories is the brainchild of two Chico State Theater Department faculty members, Sue Hargrave Pate and Katie Whitlock. Pate directed the work, and Whitlock wrote the script based on pieces developed by students in Pate’s Movement for Actors classes and student research of cultural creation mythologies. This is the production’s inaugural run.

It’s fitting that this is a contemporary college production, because Creation Stories seems well suited for a generation of ADD-afflicted Millennials: It’s fast-paced, frenetic, wonderfully surreal and very visceral.

The atmosphere of the performance is greatly enhanced by the stage setup, which allowed for the cast to enter from multiple directions and achieve a sometimes intentionally uncomfortable proximity to the audience. This was most effectively used as the whole cast performed a Haka, or Maori war dance, standing toe to toe with freaked-out front-row patrons.

The costumes are also interesting. The whole cast wears matching, loose, light-colored, tie-dyed outfits which, when combined with the hodgepodge mythology and New Age subtext of the dialogue, add a nice cult-meeting feel to the whole affair. These bare-bones base outfits are augmented with slight additions, such as headdresses or outer robes, to enable single cast members to tackle multiple roles. Eric Dobson, for example, was alternately a crocodile, a coyote, a dragon and the wind. Most impressive were when multiple players combined their bodies and costumes to make bigger creatures, like a five-person-long serpentine dragon or giant god.

As for the writing, Creation Stories is intentionally developed to not favor science, religion or any creation theory over another. The cultures behind each story and specific deities aren’t named, allowing the audience to experience each story independently of what they may know about the origin. The biblical Genesis story is told in similar folk tradition and sans familiar phrasing, emphasizing the fact that it, too, is one of many attempts to make some sense of how the universe works.

While Creation Stories is all about beginnings, it also marks a significant end. After 36 years of teaching and directing theater productions, Pate is retiring at the end of the spring semester, and this is the last show she will direct as a faculty member. She has been at Chico State since 1986, and also taught at Cornell University, State University of New York at Brockport, and San Jose State.