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.