The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer

The play opens in a neutral space, with shining light resembling a Los Alamos desert dawn, as scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer addresses the audience as if they were the listeners at his senate security hearing. He outlines his life, the pursuit of knowledge that drives him, and the desire to do good for humanity that has compelled his progress in the field of nuclear physics. Trying to evade the microscope of the communist witch-hunt, he denies any political affiliation to the party and reminisces on his truer motives behind his great experiment-- the invention of the atomic bomb. Flashing back to a snippet of the moments before the first test of the new weapon, scientists in hushed whispers place bets about their doubts, and in the light of the very first explosion of its kind, Lilith, snake-like and cackling, appears, her first emergence in Oppenheimer’s mind. She is a pre-Biblical demon, crawling and hissing her way through the thoughts of her subject, always hovering just in