PL AYBILL tartuffe
tartuffe
Molière translated into english verse by Richard Wilbur }{
approximate running time: 2 hours & 30 minutes. there will be one 20 minute intermission
TIDBITS
ARTIST NOTE: DIEGO MATAMOROS As I write this, we are about halfway through rehearsals. My dear friend and long-time colleague László Marton is directing our production, beautifully. As he watches some of our young Academy actors running one of their scenes he whispers over to me: “This is very special – they’re listening and creating moments together - wonderful work today.” I look around the room at the cast, the crew, and feel honoured to be among all of this incredible talent. By what miracle is it that I’m here? This play is so achingly funny, and yet also so devastatingly tragic. All of the characters in this masterful work are toying with their sense of theatre – their sense of playing a role to get what they desire. Perhaps the most accurate image I can think of for a play about deception is the mask. We all wear them, in life, as in the theatre, and every time we think we are revealing our true selves, it’s only just another mask. Tartuffe, of course, is the mask personified. A man pretending to be something he is not. An unholy monster in sheep’s clothing. In the end we are saved, not by religion, however, but rather by Monsieur de Molière’s great and inexplicably redemptive balm: The healing power... of laughter. Enjoy!
DIEGO MATAMOROS, Tartuffe in Tartuffe.
A few choice Molière quotes: • I
prefer a pleasant vice to an annoying virtue.
• W riting
is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.
• I t
infuriates me to be wrong when I know I’m right.
• L ife
is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think.
• W e
die only once, and for such a long time.
• T he
more we love someone, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that true love shows itself.
• O ne
ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.
CREATIVE TEAM
TARTUFFE
CAST Frank Cox-O'Connell
Laurent
Mikaela Davies
Flipote
Oliver Dennis
Orgon
Raquel Duffy
Elmire
Peter Fernandes
Police Officer
Katherine Gauthier
Mariane
Gordon Hecht
Valère
Diego Matamoros
Tartuffe
Gregory Prest
Cléante
Brenda Robins
Mme Pernelle
William Webster
M. Loyal
Oyin Oladejo
Dorine
Colin Palangio
Damis
Produc t ion LászlÓ Marton
Director
Lorenzo Savoini
Set Designer
Victoria Wallace Costume Designer
Kevin Lamotte
Lighting Designer
Richard Feren
Sound Designer
Simon Fon
Fight Director
Kelly McEvenue
Alexander Coach
Nancy Dryden
Stage Manager
Erin Brandenburg
Assistant Director
Anahita Dehbonehie
Assistant Set Designer
Shannon Doyle
Assistant Costume Designer
Ashlyn Ireland
Assistant Stage Manager
Jordana Weiss
Apprentice Stage Manager
SOULPEPPER PRODUCTION Jacqueline Robertson-Cull
Barbara Nowakowski
Will Sutton
Natalie Swiercz
Tracy Taylor
Lead Wardrobe Coordinator
Wardrobe Coordinator & Dresser
Joanne Lamberton
Paul Boddum
Props Builder
Wigs Running, Head of Hair & Makeup
First Hand
Erika Connor
Cutter
Scenic Painter
Carpenter
Props Buyer
Greg Chambers
s p e c i a l t h a n k s: Da ry l & h u n t e r at B e nc h m a r k c a r p e t.
Tartuffe is presented by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc., New York.
i l l u s t r at ion : t h e h e a ds of s tat e
BACKGROUND NOTES
“People don’t mind being mean but they never want to be ridiculous.”
T
artuffe is the work of a master comedian, a keen observer of his society’s deep concern with rules and social position. When it premiered, Louis XIV the Sun King was the monarch. His extravagances – like the Palace of Versailles – stirred the popular rage and resentment that ultimately led to the French Revolution. When this play premiered, Molière was riding a wave of popularity and royal support. He had his own company of actors, enjoyed the patronage of the King, and had a chic performing space at the Palais Royale. He was not only an adored comic actor, he was a brilliant dramatist.
He took his role as an artist seriously. “Whereas the duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them,” he wrote, “I felt that... I could do no better than to attack, by ludicrous portrayals, the vices of my age.” Audiences loved how he exposed human frailty and fragility until 1664 when Tartuffe dared to lampoon the Roman Catholic Church. The title character, one of the juiciest roles in the classical canon, is a monstrous hypocrite who claims to be a religious man. Louis XIV saw the premiere and enjoyed it, though the Archbishop of Paris – and many aristocrats in attendance – emphatically did not. The Archbishop had never liked Molière. Sensing an opportunity, he pressured the King to punish his favourite comedian. Powerful court figures and churchmen agreed, demanding that Molière’s abominable “realism” be taken off the stage before any impressionable poor people saw it and thought they should question the church too. The King did ban the play and censure the playwright. For five years the legal penalty for anyone who read, watched or performed Tartuffe was excommunication. Molière, accustomed as he was, to storms of applause and wild adoration, was shaken to his soul. He re-wrote the play but the Archbishop was unmoved. By the time the ban was lifted in 1669 the controversy had taken its toll. Molière only lived another few years and never wrote a play so openly critical again.
Today, Tartuffe is one of his most-performed, and most loved works of the world canon. The word “Tartuffe” has even entered the dictionary in both the English and French languages: it is defined as a hypocrite, especially a person who displays excessive piety. So in the end Molière got the last laugh. Or maybe we did, because three hundred and fifty years later, his ruthless exposition of hypocrisy is still right on target, and still hilarious.
Playwright Biogr aph y Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was born into a prosperous bourgeois family in Paris in 1622. His mother died when he was young and although he studied law for a time to please his father, his heart wasn’t in it. In 1643 he started a theatre company (and a long liaison) with actress Madeleine Béjart. They struggled at first and he was briefly in debtors’ prison but the group managed to tour the provinces for 13 years. The young actordirector honed his comic chops and learned playwriting during this time. He also took a stage name: Molière, to spare his family any embarrassment about his profession. When he returned to Paris in 1658, he had broken with Madeleine and married her much younger daughter Armande. His new acting company performed for – and pleased – King Louis XIV. Stable at last, secure in the King’s favour, at the peak of his powers, he created the plays that made his name: The School for Wives, Tartuffe, The Misanthrope, and The Miser, among others. Molière worked heroically writing plays, court entertainments and musicals with composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, keeping his company together, and battling the powerful and pompous. But he was suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis and in 1673 he collapsed on stage during a performance of The Imaginary Invalid. Legend has it that he insisted on finishing the show and died several hours later. He is buried at Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
Tidbits & Background Notes by 2014 Soulpepper Resident Artist Paula Wing
THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING!
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Soulpepper is an active member of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (pact), the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (tapa) and Theatre Ontario, and engages, under the terms of the Canadian Theatre Agreement, professional artists who are members of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association. Scenic Artists and Set Decorators employed by Soulpepper are represented by Local 828 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. 
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