Siddhartha: Seeker of Truth

Book, music, and lyrics by Greg Shepherd

SIDDHARTHA: SEEKER OF TRUTH

A Hero’s Journey

SHORT SYNOPSIS: With Hermann Hesse’s classic novel “Siddhartha” as a jumping off point, “Siddhartha: Seeker of Truth” is a musical comedy setting of the mythic “hero’s journey”. In this show, the hero is a young college student 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. He quits college and ropes his best friend into joining him on his journey that is by turns hilarious and deeply thought provoking.

FULL SYNOPSIS:

With Hermann Hesse’s classic novel “Siddhartha” as a jumping off point, “Siddhartha: Seeker of Truth” 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., a college student, reads “Siddhartha”, and decides to quit college to go on a search for truth in his life. He stops off at home in the village of Bountiful Peninsula, which is in the midst of a religious dispute. To resolve the dispute, they arrange a marriage between Arthur, who is from one of the two sects, and his longtime girlfriend, Patience Puregood, who is from the other. But Arthur is having none of this arranged marriage business. He announces that he is going on a search for truth and enlightenment, just like the title character of Hesse’s novel. 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. The Man teaches him that he must find himself by losing himself. Siddhartha is puzzled. How can one find oneself by losing oneself? Just as he is puzzling over this conundrum, his best friend Farley suddenly appears, telling him that Patience Puregood is close to death. Siddhartha accompanies Farley back to Arcadia.

Upon seeing Patience on her sickbed, Siddhartha realizes that the meaning of his life has been there all along. The Man of No Wisdom was right: Siddhartha can only find himself by losing himself, in his case through his love for Patience. The show concludes with Siddhartha and Patience getting married and the townspeople uniting under their new church: the Church of Boundless Loving-Kindness. A final reveal of the show is that the Narrator is actually Farley who has written the show we’ve just seen as a memoir of his youth.

BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT

Gregory Shepherd (playwright, composer, and lyricist of “Siddhartha: Seeker of Truth”)

I spent my early years in New York City’s Lower East Side; New Jersey; London, England; and Honolulu. I was the recipient of a graduate fellowship from the Japanese Ministry of Education for music study at Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music, where I studied music composition and vocal performance. I am fluent in Japanese. I have also studied operatic and musical theatre performance, and was cast in leading roles in a number of productions, notably Figaro in Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro”, Paul Berthalet the puppeteer in “Carnival”, Emile DeBecque in “South Pacific”, El Gallo in “The Fantasticks”, and Don Quixote in “Man of La Mancha”.

I was the classical music critic and a feature writer for the Honolulu Advertiser, Hawaii’s main daily newspaper, for ten years. I have two master’s degrees in music and am currently a Professor of Music at Kauai Community College.

I studied piano for many years and have facility in advanced works such as Chopin ballades, Beethoven sonatas, and Bach English Suites among other concert pieces. I have composed music in numerous genres, from orchestral to solo song, but “Siddhartha: Seeker of Truth” is my first full-length musical.