New Play, “Lilith,” Has Its Apple and Eats It, Too
Of all the peculiar ways to end a relationship, few seem to top the breakup between Lilith and Adam. Not only were they, by some accounts, creation’s first ever man and woman, but the catalyst of their split—essentially an argument about sex positions—offers a bizarre yet insightful analogy for gendered power dynamics. While Lilith’s autonomy has long categorized her as a villain and demon, many Jewish feminists have reclaimed her as an example of independence and bravery over the past 50 years.
Lilith, a new play written by Adina Aaron and directed by Samantha Ozeas, reimagines the character once again, adding new layers of complexity, dignity, and affection to her story. The production, which runs at The Tank in NYC from August 7-22, explores sexual politics and spiritual conflict in an Eden full of wonder, anger, and longing.
When religious disagreement and sexual violence sours the love between Lilith (Sophia Victoria Deler) and Adam (Erik Ohno Dagoberg), Lilith flees Eden, finding an independence that is both liberating and lonely. In her absence, Adam dominates his new lover, Eve (Bryanna Marie Felipe), whose charming naivete enables him to set the rules. All the while, Lilith visits Eden in secret, forming an intimate bond with Eve that disrupts everything Eve has been told.
The play is often sensual, sometimes violent, and always emotionally raw. A note in the program warns of “sexual content, sexual assault, blood, self harm, simulated child-birth, [and] strong language.” (I would also add existential crises and aggressively sapphic yearning to the list.) While this extreme content may be hard to take, it emphasizes each character’s devastating humanity.
In Aaron and Ozeas’ version of Creation, a Creator is discussed, praised, and rejected, but never seen or heard. Each problem and solution stems from the actions of Lilith, Eve, and Adam. Lilith has no interest in Adam’s male God, who emboldens him toward domination and speaks to him in binaries of right and wrong. Instead, her reverence for the universe and dedication to her own freedom leads her to worship Inanna, a Mesopotamian goddess of sexuality and war also known as Ishtar.
In Jewish tradition, the character of Lilith, who goes unmentioned in Genesis, exists in midrash, religious stories that expand on the original biblical text to answer questions or add meaning. She first appears in The Alphabet of Ben Sira, a satirical, mystical text from the Middle Ages, as a potential explanation for discrepancies in the creation story. In this version, Lilith is Adam’s demonically audacious first wife who insists that men and women are equal before flying away to torment infants. More recently, feminist theologian Judith Plaskow’s 1972 midrash The Coming of Lilith rebranded that chutzpah as heroism, kickstarting a reclamation that included the naming of Lilith Magazine and the song “We Are Androgenous.”
Lilith is thoroughly researched and surprisingly faithful to the sources preceding it. The play pays homage to each of these texts, blending The Alphabet of Ben Sira’s dark specificity and Plaskow’s sanctification of independence and sisterhood with modern sensibilities around intimacy, spirituality, and queer love. The script dutifully rebuts each nasty rumor about Lilith, the demon, allowing us to understand Lilith, the woman.
Along the way, Lilith takes the concept of midrash as fan fiction to new heights. Eve and Lilith share a mutual fascination that makes them desperate to know one another fully—biblically, even. Eve’s curiosity helps Lilith better understand her own values, and Lilith’s values open Eve’s eyes to the world beyond Eden. But even as both women are tied to one another, they are also each tied to Adam, in a cosmically messy tangle of longing and misunderstanding.
The situation at the heart of the story, which feels a little too complicated to call a love triangle, can sometimes feel tiresome—too much apple without enough juice. If it weren’t for Eve’s warm earnestness, which Felipe embodies with disarming depth, the play’s middle might have felt ungodly slow. Deler, Dagoberg, and Felipe’s compelling performances strengthen the lyrical but didactic writing, which reads like a combination of prayer, artsy erotica, and soft-spoken slam poetry.
The production’s abstraction often works to its advantage. Ningning Renee Yang’s playful set features a moppy, muppet-like Tree of Knowledge, a fluffy green rug representing the borders of Eden, and a ladder to the moon. Cramming the entire world onto a stage is a fitting choice for a play full of clashing ideas that refuses to let one ideology take up more space than the next. In a world of conflicting narratives and increasing polarization, Lilith avoids being confined by dualities like partnership and ownership, love and heartbreak, God and the Universe, Eden and the outside world.
Is it possible to love God, as Adam does, without vetoing all other worldviews? Is it possible to love someone without owning them? Is it possible to love someone, and also love someone else at the same time?
Lilith says yes.
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