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Dandelion, a trip through time
 The processes of evolution that scientists believe created our world took far more than a Chapin class period to take place. Nonetheless, Class 4 and 5 dramatists managed to pack millions of years into 40 minutes with a play called Dandelion, which carried its audience on a whirlwind time-trip from the days before fish swam in the seas to the days when humans began to write to one another.
Darwin would have been impressed.
Students began by inviting spectators to follow them on a journey far back in time, “before New York City,” “before trees” and “before flowers, before cats, before birds.” They rolled back the years to an era when no life forms could be found on Earth and, through script and rhyme and song, slowly repopulated the planet with different and constantly evolving species of plants, animals and people.
In one scene, girls playing the parts of fish (costumed in swim goggles and bright-orange arm floaties) kept crowding into a small area of water until one fish was squeezed out of the water and onto the land, where she evolved into a frog. Four girls playing monkeys, wearing brown knit hats with fleecy tan ears, discovered that they could eventually stand up, moving in an instant from a four-legged lifestyle to a two-legged one. And by the time those monkeys had evolved into people — with actors clad no longer in animal costumes, but in burlap sacks that evoked cave life — the students were ready to place their audience “on the road to culture.”
A fun and lighthearted look at how we might have arrived where we are today, Dandelion also gave the student actors a chance to appear in multiple scenes as varied characters. It was reassuring for audience members to return to class and to their offices after Friday’s performance with the knowledge that their time-bending adventure had brought them full-circle, back to the point where reading, writing and speech are within our grasp.
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