Siddhartha: Seeker of Truth (A Hero's Journey) at Kauai Community College Performing Arts Center

SIDDHARTHA: SEEKER OF TRUTH

A Hero’s Journey

Script, music, orchestration, and lyrics by Gregory Shepherd

© 2023 Gregory Shepherd

SYNOPSIS

With Hermann Hesse’s classic novel as a jumping off point, “Siddhartha: Seeker of Truth” by Gregory Shepherd is a musical comedy setting of the mythic “hero’s journey”. In this show, the hero is a young man whose journey is a quest for meaning in his life, a quest which ultimately brings all of the main characters to a higher level of meaning in their lives as well. 

Arthur Hope, Jr. is a college student with a sensitive soul. The first scene opens with him reading “Siddhartha” which he interrupts to sing his ‘want’ song called “I Am No Prophet”, an anthem to his quest for meaning in life. At the end of his song, he packs up and goes home to his town of Arcadia which is in the midst of a religious dispute that has divided the town in half. The level of bitterness existing in the town is summed up in the chorus song “Heretics and Heathens”, with each side concluding with the lyrics “Don’t have anything to do with people who are going to hell!”

But now one side of the town has all the fresh water, and the other side has all the arable land. They need to resolve the dispute before they all die of hunger and thirst on either side of the barrier they have constructed between themselves. In time-honored fashion they arrange a marriage between Arthur Hope, Jr., who is from one of the two sects, and his longtime girlfriend, Patience Puregood, who is from the other sect. But Arthur is having none of it. He announces that he has quit college and is going on a search for truth and enlightenment, just like the title character of Hesse’s novel. Oh, and he’s also changed his name to…Siddhartha, which means ‘seeker of truth’.  

The townspeople call in Ace Hurlbut, the village’s richest citizen, who tries to persuade Siddhartha to find peace of mind like he did…by being richer than everyone else. He makes his materialistic points with his song “Gravy Train”. Siddhartha tells Ace Hurlbut that he wants no part of his life of materialism, so the townspeople drag him to the village psychiatrist, Dr. Scrooby (the Threshold Guardian of myth). Dr. Scrooby analyzes Siddhartha and concludes that he must be insane to want to leave Arcadia, and he announces that Siddhartha will be committed to the Scrooby Institute for Malcontents, Maniacs and Lunatics, all the while singing his signature song, “God Is Not a Sentimentalist”, an anthem to his patented product, Scrooby’s Miracle Oil and Brain Cleanser.

Siddhartha escapes from Dr. Scrooby and ropes his best friend, Farley Riggle (the archetypal Ally), into joining him on his search for meaning in life. They must leave behind their girlfriends, Patience Puregood and Dolores Del Fuego, who are heartbroken. Farley agrees very reluctantly to join Siddhartha, and together they go off in search of enlightenment for Siddhartha, and any loose young women they might encounter along the way for Farley. They begin their journey with the archetypal call to adventure, a song titled “Portals of Mystery”.

After they leave Arcadia, their series of misadventures eventually leads them to the Commune of the Manifest Ecstasy, a cult by any other name, where the Father Benevolent, their leader, has just died. The commune members are frantically searching for a successor, and by a zany turn of events, they choose Farley, the most unspiritual character in the whole show, to be their next Father Benevolent. But he’s soon discovered to be a fraud, and he and Siddhartha are thrown in jail. Their girlfriends and Ace Hurlbut, who have come to do an intervention on Siddhartha, have arrived on the scene, and they too are thrown in the commune jail.

After escaping from the jail, Siddhartha declares his intention of continuing his search for truth, but Farley and the others have had enough and want to go home. So, Siddhartha goes off on his own. But not long thereafter he gets lost, and he wanders for forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, at the end of which time he is losing his mind. He decides to end his life. Suddenly there appears on the scene the Angel of Death. Through a case of mistaken identity, she tells him that it’s ‘not his time’ and that he needs to go on living despite his existential despair. She points him in the direction of a character known as the Man of No Wisdom, the archetypal Mentor figure of myth, who lives within a remote grove of apple trees. There, Siddhartha learns some deep lessons about love and life. At the end of his time there, Farley suddenly reappears, telling him that Patience Puregood is close to death. Siddhartha accompanies Farley back to Arcadia.

Will Siddhartha find his meaning in life? Will Patience Puregood survive? Yes, to both questions, but not without some very compelling developments in their respective dramatic arcs.