Paradise Lost: Darwin's Tortoise and Tsunami, vol. 37

Darwin's Tortoise delivers a satirical reading of modern history authored by the biologist's now ancient tortoise, Harriet. Through evolution, Harriet has been transformed into a woman-tortoise hybrid, and she offers a unique perspective of humanity's evolutionary involution and moral bankruptcy. Mayorga's intellectually charged play heightens our understanding of the relationship between history and historical memory, power and violence, language and identity and literary fiction and reality. Tsunami dramatizes the cataclysmic event in Indonesia in 2004 that left more than one hundred thousand dead. It is a concise but profound meditation on our need for vigilance in the pursuit of achieving harmony with nature, as well as an admonishment of the possible consequences of neglect.