The Milwaukee Repertory Theater tackles the culture war with a production of Catherine Trieschmann's How the World Began. In this recently written drama, a teacher from New York in need of health insurance takes a job teaching science in a Kansas school that was leveled by a tornado. During a lecture, she marvels at how inanimate matter has somehow become life. It's one of the greatest mysteries there is, but not "if you happen to believe all that other gobbledygook." The teacher doesn't remember using those exact words until a student confronts her, asking for an apology for what are obviously her deeply held beliefs. The play resists tired, old cultural stereotypes in favor of complicated, fully realized characters.