Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’”

                --Genesis 18:13

If the spirit of religion join itself to the love of wonder, there is an end of common sense…

                --David Hume, Of Miracles

In 1637, Descartes put forth the following explanation of the rainbow, a phenomenon which had puzzled men for thousands of years:

A single ray of light has a pathetic repertoire, limited to bending and bouncing (into water, glass or air, and from mirrors). But when rays are put together into a family--sunlight, for example--the possibilities get dramatically richer. This is because a family of rays has the holistic property, not inherent in any individual ray, that it can be focused so as to concentrate on caustic lines and surfaces. Caustics are the brightest places in an optical field. They are the singularities of geometrical optics. The most familiar caustic is the rainbow, a grossly distorted image of the Sun in the form of a giant arc in the skyspace of directions, formed by the angular focusing of sunlight that has been twice refracted and once reflected in raindrops.

This explanation was not only a pioneering advancement of theoretical physics but was also perceived by many to be a loss of wonder in a new age of science. In a world of immediate answers and ready explanations, it’s easy to forget that often the narrative has a greater meaning than the facts. After all, the flood story of Genesis is ultimately built around an explanation of the rainbow. But all aspects of life are magical if looked at from the right perspective. Sometimes it just takes a tilted angle and the story becomes new again.

Set Design by Marika Stephens

Lighting Design by Sohail Najafi

Sound Design by Michael Cooper

Costume Design by Priscilla Watson

Prop Master Jim Sudik

Puppet Master Lucas Lilieholm

Stage Management by Sasha Sobolevsky

Featuring Coco Kleppinger, Dee Amerio Sudik, Ryan Bergmann, Kevin Broberg, Eric Martig, Kaitlin Morgan, and Natalie Lopez

Produced by Tom Burmester and Danika Sudik