Theater Review – Man from Earth (The Story of a Man Who Lived 14,000 Years: Fact or Fiction?)

Watching the play Man from Earth while on vacation made me think deeply about religion and faith. The story of John, the protagonist who has lived for 14,000 years, shakes religious beliefs and questions the existence of absolutes. The play makes us rethink the things we take for granted.

 

When I was on vacation, I suddenly realized that I wanted to live a cultural life, so I looked for theater and found something more interesting. I was drawn to the play by the plot, which included a professor telling his fellow professors that he had lived for 14,000 years, the protagonist and his colleagues discussing this, and the improbability of the story. I chose this play because it met my high expectations and I wanted to introduce it through an essay.
The title of the play is ‘Man from Earth’, or literally, a man from the earth. The plot goes like this. John Oldman has been a professor for 10 years when he quits his job and mysteriously leaves for another place. His fellow professors organize a farewell party for him. When the professors become suspicious of John’s behavior, he reveals that he has lived for 14,000 years. He adds that he has been moving to a new place every ten years to hide his agelessness. At first, his coworkers don’t believe this outrageous story. But then they are confused by John’s logical and thorough explanation.
John, who has been around for 14,000 years, was a friend of Van Gogh, a fellow discoverer of the New World with Columbus, and a disciple of Shakyamuni. In his long life, he has earned more than 10 degrees, met the love of his life, started a family, and seen his children. But he could only keep it all together for a decade at most. John has been drifting ever since. His coworkers don’t believe his story and keep asking questions to find the holes. His coworkers are caught between believing him and disbelieving him, or not believing him at all. With their tails between their legs, the coworkers ask John if he’s ever met anyone from the Bible. John eventually reveals that he is one of those people, and explains how it came to be. When John was a student of Shakyamuni, he was very impressed with his ideas. Determined to bring these ideas to the West and enlighten people, he travels to Europe and partners with like-minded individuals to make it happen. To John’s surprise, one of the people he meets in the Bible is Jesus Christ. It’s the most shocking thing he’s ever said. His coworkers look at him and say he’s crazy. One of them, Edith, a devout Christian, screams blasphemy and faints.
I’m a non-religious person, so I had no problem watching this play. I don’t know how the religious audience felt. They might have been as outraged as Edith, or they might have watched the play without a care in the world. While watching the play, I felt like I was sitting in the living room where John and his colleagues were having the discussion. There was a scene in the play where a character smoked a cigarette, and I was surprised to actually smell the cigarette – they had actually lit it. I understand the intention was to make the situation realistic, but I could feel the audience was taken aback by the sudden smell. It broke the immersion for a moment, but their conversation was still as urgent as ping pong balls bouncing back and forth on a ping pong table.
I didn’t really get the sense that the play had a message. Rather than being directly thematic, it seemed to give us something to think about by giving us a fresh shock of the existence of Jesus. It is a very unstable proposition that the absolute existence of a religion that we often take for granted and don’t even question could have been a human being like us, and that it has changed over time to the point where we don’t know what it was originally. I think there must have been inevitable reasons for the transformation of the earliest religions, like building houses and eating food to survive.
Watching the play, I was reminded of the many moments we encounter in our lives. It made me realize how much we take for granted in our daily lives. John’s story reminded me of how much the things we know can change. We often fear change, but I felt like the message was that we need to understand that it is a natural and inevitable process. This thought made the play even more immersive and made me focus on each character’s every line.
If we assume that John’s words are true, then Jesus, who was an absolute being, becomes a human being no different from them, and Christianity loses its supernatural power. What is religion then? Because if you believe John’s words, nothing could be more false. Religion can be denied very easily, not only by John’s argument, but also by many others. Because we can’t see the real thing. Because too much time has passed since its inception. It has changed too much in the meantime. Despite these flaws, people turn to religion in unimaginable ways. Why does religion have so much support and deep trust?
There are countless reasons and purposes for people to believe in religion. I believe self-soothing is a big part of it. In less than 100 years of life, humans are faced with many unexpected moments. We live every day in a world that is hard to deal with, such as the harshness of the world where you have to work hard or die, and the feeling that you are the only one who is weak. It is natural to feel the need to constantly make excuses for yourself, to be comforted, and to be recognized. In a way, it’s safe to say that we believe in God to overcome weakness and become stronger. In fact, people around me have told me that religion keeps them grounded and makes them less susceptible to external stimuli. I’ve thought about turning to religion myself when I’ve been in desperate need of something to lean on.
But how do people who don’t believe in a particular religion find comfort? They, too, seem to look to God for comfort and satisfaction. Technically, it’s not God, but a supernatural entity. For example, we often see people who believe that only the heavens will understand them when no one else does. In this case, the person is giving the sky the meaning of a supernatural being. In other words, if we focus on self-soothing as one of the many purposes of religion, the definition of religion expands from the narrow sense of believing in a particular deity to include any supernatural being that brings comfort to the mind. In this broader sense, even the non-religious can be said to have a religion if they look to the supernatural for comfort.
Toward the end of the play, in the midst of the chaos, John finally reveals that he has made up all of his stories. Rather than confuse people by revealing the truth, John chooses to cover it up to give them a sense of security. In order to preserve Edith’s and his companions’ desperate faith in Jesus, he told them a white lie so that they could be comforted to their hearts’ content. This is in line with my own thinking. Jesus, who had been suspected of being human, was made divine again, and his companions could be comforted once again.
The debate about religion and faith is always a hot topic. This play gives us the opportunity to reflect on the nature of faith and the reasons behind it. We realized that it’s important to try to find the stories and truths behind them rather than unconditional belief. In the end, whatever beliefs we have, what matters is what they mean to us and how they affect our lives. The play Man from Earth did a great job of asking these questions.
It also made me reexamine my own beliefs and values. We often take so many things for granted, but there may be many stories and truths behind them that we don’t realize. This play reminded me how important it is to try to find those hidden truths, and to constantly question ourselves.
Even after the play ended, I was still thinking about it for a while. John’s story is not just fiction, but it made me think about the many questions and doubts we face in our daily lives and realize how important they are to our lives. Through this play, I was able to see the world with a wider perspective, and I think that’s the biggest gift it gave me.