The Serpent

 

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A Berkeley High memory, fifty years later

One of my fondest memories of going to Berkeley High School in the 1970s was being part of its award-winning drama program. I didn’t know how lucky I was. I just knew that I loved being on stage, surrounded by other students who were curious, expressive, and unafraid to ask big questions.

I appeared in two plays during my time at BHS: The Madwoman of Chaillot and The Serpent. Looking back now, it feels like an unlikely but perfect pairing—one a poetic satire about greed and moral sanity, the other a raw, experimental ritual that challenged myth, authority, and innocence itself.

The Madwoman of Chaillot (and a Line Gone Wrong)

In The Madwoman of Chaillot, I played a server. It wasn’t a big role, but it came with a memorable line:

“She’s not mad — she’s the Madwoman of Chaillot.”

Unfortunately, on one performance night, I noticed my mother in the audience just as I delivered it. What came out instead was:

“She’s not mad — she’s the Madwoman of Berkeley… oops, Chaillot.”

There was a beat. Then laughter.

My mother took the joke well. The audience did too. Theater teaches you early that mistakes happen—and that sometimes they land better than what was written.

For those unfamiliar, The Madwoman of Chaillot is a two‑act poetic satire by Jean Giraudoux, first performed in Paris in 1945. Set in a timeless, romanticized Paris, it tells the story of an eccentric woman, Countess Aurélia, who takes on a group of corrupt businesspeople planning to tear up the city in search of oil. It’s funny, humane, and quietly radical—a defense of imagination, beauty, and moral clarity in the face of ruthless greed.

It felt old‑world and strangely modern at the same time. Even as a teenager, I sensed that.

The Serpent

The second play I appeared in back then—now fifty years ago—was The Serpent. I’m in the old photo, bottom row, second from the left.

The Serpent was something else entirely.

Written by Jean‑Claude van Italie and developed with The Open Theatre in the late 1960s, it wasn’t a conventional play so much as a ceremony. There were no fixed characters, no tidy plot. Instead, it used movement, chanting, ensemble work, and fragments of text to explore the Book of Genesis alongside modern history.

It retold the Garden of Eden story—among others—from unexpected angles, including the Snake’s point of view. That alone made it controversial. Add references to contemporary violence and political trauma, and you had a piece that unsettled audiences and performers alike.

For a public high school to stage The Serpent says something about Berkeley High at that time. We weren’t just putting on plays. We were being trusted with material that asked difficult questions about obedience, knowledge, guilt, freedom, and what it means to be human.

That experience stuck with me.

 

The Serpent in My Own Writing

Decades later, I found myself returning to that voice—the Snake’s voice—in my own work.

I’ve written multiple poems

and short prose pieces revisiting Eden from that perspective. What follows is one of them.

I Am the Snake

I be just a snake
slithering in the woods,

looking for a place
to lie down in the sun,

rest my weary bones,

soak up cosmic rays,
chill out a bit.

 

Nothing but a snake—
but boy, am I a snake.

 

I am the one
your mother warned you about,

the whisper in the leaves,
the sideways question.

 

So there I am,
minding my own business,
when I notice her—

Eve, the new kid in the garden.

Curious. Awake.
Already asking questions.

 

I slide over,
cool as I can manage,

and say,

“Who told you this was forbidden?”

“The man,” she says.

Ah yes.
The man.

 

I tell her what I know—
or at least what sounds like knowing.

I tell her the fruit is calling,
that knowledge has a price
but ignorance has a cost.

 

She hesitates.
Then she smiles.

 

And in that moment,
innocence ends

and history begins.

 

Alarms go off—
heaven knows,
hell knows.

 

I’m banished.
She’s exiled.

The story keeps going.

I slither on down the road,
knowing this much:

Nothing was ever the same again.

 

Eve Eats the Apple

 

This theme kept returning, evolving into poems, flash fiction, and retellings where Eve is not simply tempted, but dissatisfied; where Adam is passive; where authority sounds bureaucratic; and where the Snake is less a monster than a voice urging awareness.

Here’s a shorter piece from that cycle:

Eve in the Garden Eats the Apple

Eve was in the garden
talking with Mr. Snake,
her new best friend.

She complained about Adam,
about the management,
about the rules.

 

The Snake said,
“Do you trust me?”

She did.

 

She ate the apple.
Called Adam over.
He ate it too.

 

The Snake whispered,
“Set yourself free.”

 

God came down,
banished them both,
said,

“You made the bed.”

And to the Snake:
“You won your bet.”

Looking Back

Berkeley High’s drama program didn’t just teach me how to stand on a stage. It gave me permission—to question, to experiment, to inhabit voices that weren’t safe or simple.

Fifty years later, I can still feel that influence winding through my work.

Some stories never really let you go.

What Stayed With Me

What I didn’t understand then—but see clearly now—is that those two plays were teaching the same lesson from opposite ends of the stage.

The Madwoman of Chaillot asked what happens when greed tries to pass itself off as progress, and whether imagination and moral courage can still push back.

The Serpent asked what happens the moment innocence ends—and whether knowledge, once gained, is a curse or the beginning of responsibility.

One was whimsical and humane.
The other was raw, unsettling, and ritualistic.

Both trusted young people to sit inside ambiguity without being told what to think.

That trust mattered.

Berkeley High didn’t just give us scripts. It gave us space—to experiment, to fail publicly, to say the wrong line and keep going, to step into uncomfortable stories and discover our own voices inside them.

Why the Snake Keeps Talking

I didn’t plan on spending decades revisiting Eden from the Snake’s point of view. It just kept happening.

The Snake is persuasion.
The Snake is doubt.
The Snake is the voice that says, Are you sure this rule makes sense?

That voice can be dangerous.
It can also be necessary.

What The Serpent taught me—long before I had language for it—is that myth isn’t about obedience. It’s about wrestling with what it means to know, to choose, to lose innocence and keep going anyway.

That’s a very human story.

Curtain Call

Fifty years later, I can still feel those stages under my feet—the Florence Schwimer Little Theater, the echoes, the nerves, the laughter, the mistakes.

I didn’t become a professional actor.
But theater never really left me.

It shows up in my poems.
In my satire.
In the way I question authority and listen for the voice underneath the story.

Some lines you forget.

Others—especially the ones you mess up—stay with you forever.

 

A short note on BSA’s Drama Department courtesy of CO-Pilot

Berkeley High School (BHS) Drama Program

History, Culture, and Notable Alumni

poetic bonus – Everything I Learned About Life at BHS

 

1. The BHS Drama Program: Historical Context

Berkeley High School has long been recognized as one of the most arts‑rich public high schools in California, with particularly strong traditions in theater, music, and dance. By the 1960s and 1970s, the school already had:

• A dedicated drama program
• Multiple full‑time drama teachers
• Technical theater staff, including costuming and stage support

This level of institutional support was unusual for a public high school and helped foster a pipeline into professional theater and film careers. [alumni.berkeley.edu]

The school’s Community Theater, completed in 1938, became a major cultural venue in Berkeley and hosted professional performances and touring artists, reinforcing a strong performance culture for students. [berkeleyhi…jacket.com]

2. Notable BHS Drama & Acting Alumni

(Selected list, drama‑relevant)

The following individuals are documented BHS attendees or graduates who went on to significant careers in acting, writing, or performance.

Early / Mid‑20th Century

• Raymond Burr (Class of 1935) – Actor (Perry Mason, Ironside) [en.wikipedia.org]
• Robert Culp (Class of 1947) – Actor (I Spy, The Greatest American Hero) [en.wikipedia.org]

1960s–1970s Generation (Key Era)

• Paul Mooney (Class of 1959) – Actor, comedian, writer [en.wikipedia.org]
• Robert Sicular (BHS attendee, Class of 1974) – Stage and screen actor (see detailed bio below) [alumni.berkeley.edu]
• Tom Hanks (attended one semester; graduated 1974 elsewhere) – Actor and filmmaker
  • Widely documented as graduating high school in 1974
  • His Bay Area high‑school years overlapped with Berkeley and Oakland schools before graduation [sfgate.com]

✅ Your note that Sicular and Hanks are the same graduating year cohort (1974) is consistent with publicly documented timelines.

Late 20th Century / Contemporary

• Timothy Hutton (Class of 1978) – Actor (Ordinary People) [en.wikipedia.org]
• Rebecca Romijn (Class of 1990) – Actress (X‑Men, Star Trek: Discovery) [en.wikipedia.org]
• Andy Samberg (Class of 1996) – Actor, comedian (SNL, Brooklyn Nine‑Nine) [en.wikipedia.org]
• Akiva Schaffer & Jorma Taccone (Class of 1995–96) – Writers/actors (The Lonely Island) [en.wikipedia.org]
• Daveed Diggs (Class of 2000) – Actor, playwright, musician (Hamilton) [en.wikipedia.org]

3. Official Biography: Robert Sicular

(Your longtime friend — and a major BHS theater success story) 

Personal Note:  I met Robert Sicular in the first grade at Thousand Oaks Elementary School and he became my life-long best friend. I have known him now for 65 years which makes me feel old.  We still talk once a month or so. He visited me in the Peace Coprs in 1974 and in India when I served in the consulate in Mumbai. I even got him a role in an Indian Bollywood movie!  End Note

✅ Verified, official bio sources used:

• Robert Sicular’s personal site
• Cal Alumni Association
• Marin Theatre Company
• BroadwayWorld

Robert Sicular — Official Bio Summary

Robert Sicular was born and raised in Berkeley, California, and grew up in a theatrical family. He has been performing since early childhood and credits Berkeley High School’s drama program as a formative influence, noting that during his time there the school had full‑time drama teachers, a costumer, and a theater technician — a rare level of support for public education. [alumni.berkeley.edu]

After BHS, Sicular attended the University of California, Berkeley, and later trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). [Biography…rt Sicular]

He has enjoyed a decades‑long professional acting career, including:

Major Theater Work

• Berkeley Repertory Theatre
• American Conservatory Theater (ACT)
• Marin Theatre Company
• Denver Center Theatre Company
• Actors Theatre of Louisville
• Seattle Repertory Theatre
• South Coast Repertory
• Oregon Shakespeare Festival (8 seasons)

[Biography…rt Sicular], [marintheatre.org]

Screen Work

• Recurring roles on General Hospital and The Young and the Restless
• Feature films including:
  • Never Die Twice
  • Dil Pardesi Ho Gaya (note: His Bollywood movie)
  • Love and Taxes

[Biography…rt Sicular]

Sicular remains one of the most respected Bay Area stage actors, known especially for Shakespeare and contemporary American theater, and is a longtime member of Actors’ Equity Association and SAG‑AFTRA. [Biography…rt Sicular]

Why This Matters

Putting it together:

• BHS was not just a feeder for fame — it was a serious training ground
• The early 1970s cohort (your era) sits at a crossroads between:
  • Bay Area experimental theater
  • The rise of regional repertory companies
  • Hollywood film and television expansion
• Robert Sicular represents the regional theater pinnacle of that pipeline
• Tom Hanks represents the global film outcome of the same cultural moment

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