TARTUFFE PROGRAM NOTES:
Heather and Eileen: Tartuffe marks the first dramaturgical collaboration between Hobart and William Smith Colleges and another students and faculty from another campus. We thought before we get into answering specific questions about this production, we would share our reasoning behind the collaboration between HWS and Marist College, which boils down to our belief that theatre students (and faculty) benefit from these sorts of multi-campus collaborations. Such opportunities introduce students to other working styles and theatrical practices, which expands their training. While theatre tends to follow standard production patterns, individual choices and approaches of faculty on the production team do vary. These faculty-student research opportunities also enhance the academic learning experience by showing the practical application of classroom knowledge in production settings. Students also extend their pool of contacts and production experiences by participating in such collaborations.
For this particular show, we’ve made good use of current technology on both campuses. In addition to transmitting files in real-time between campuses, the Marist folks have been able to Skype into rehearsal thanks to the work of the Hobart & William Smith sound designer, Kelly Walker, who rigged up cameras and microphones to stream rehearsals. This enabled the HWS students to get feedback on multiple rehearsals from the dramaturgical team, while enabling Marist students to practice their dramaturgy and see another director in action despite the distance. This practical application of current technology has introduced students to the new possibilities in theatrical production collaboration.
Eileen: What drew you to want to direct Tartuffe and how is this 17th century French play still relevant to a modern American audience?
Heather: I have always loved Molière’s plays due to their wonderful humor and urgency. When we sat down to discuss the likely season in combination with what we produced last year (largely, though not exclusively modern dramas), a period comedy seemed to provide a welcome contrast both for audiences and for the training of our student actors. I found I kept coming back to Tartuffe as an ideal script. It is hilarious, but the comedy is not without a pointed message. This play examines the ways in which strict ideology can be used to manipulate someone to work against his best self-interest in times of upheaval. Although Tartuffe is most commonly studied for its arguments against religious extremism, I am particularly interested in the ways in which religious extremism is often relied upon to justify the oppression of women. After all, when his back is to the wall and he reveals his true objectives in making Tartuffe his sole heir, Orgon says, “I’m going to make you people see; / the master in this house is me!” Religion can be a convenient mechanism through which the underprivileged are penalized in the name of righteousness. Given recent attempts across much of the US to legislate away women’s rights that increase access to freedom and choice, this play seems particularly apt at this time.
Heather: So, Eileen, I’m curious what you found most surprising in your research for the show?
Eileen: Suffrage cats. While browsing through the online archive of suffrage materials at the Museum of London, I happened upon postcards of cats dressed in suffrage gear. Given the internet’s current fascination with cats, at first I found the suffrage cats to be fascinating evidence that the nineteenth-century has never left us. But then, I dug a little deeper into the source of iconography and realized that the cats were being employed as propaganda in response to the 1913 Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act. This law, passed in response to hunger strikes by imprisoned suffragists, was called the Cat and Mouse Act because it enabled the authorities to release prisoners just long enough for them to regain their health before they would then be rearrested. Likened to a game of cat and mouse by the suffragists, this process sought to undermine the power of the hunger strikes. Both pro- and anti-suffrage activists and publishers seeking to benefit from the debate issued cat-themed postcards and posters. Selections of these can be seen in part of the lobby display.
Heather: I wonder if you see any similarities between the game of cat and mouse played between the authorities and suffragists and the way in which Tartuffe plays with Orgon’s family in this play?
Eileen: I think that’s an interesting way of viewing most of the power dynamics in the play, actually. Tartuffe, who has caught Orgon before the action begins, spends the play bringing Orgon closer and closer to his financial death by releasing him into his household and then luring him back to the side of Tartuffe’s false righteousness. Tartuffe knows that he can increase his power over Orgon through such games, when he tries this same scheme on Elmire, he fails to notice that she, in turn, is manipulating him in the same manner. Likewise Orgon, following Tartuffe’s lead, tries to act like the cat, but he just fails miserably. In the opening dumbshow, he stalks the house, trying to keep the women behaving in what he considers a more appropriately domesticated nineteenth-century fashion: they are to embroider but not read, and they certainly should not be organizing suffrage campaign mailings. His attempts to keep their work decorative rather than productive are thwarted by their more masterful subterfuge. And, while a loyal servant might be a good ally for Orgon in such moments, Dorine’s loyalties to Orgon are not unthinking and blind; the same spunk that leads her to support the suffragists also causes her to refuse to let Orgon undermine the family by giving in to Tartuffe. Throughout, then, the characters are trying to trap each other, occasionally letting their prey go once caught, and continuing the cycle so as to prove to each other that their goals are the just ones.
Heather: Could you speak a bit about the intersection of oppression and comedy? How does comedy allow for the oppressed to rebel?
Eileen: Traditional comedies progress from order, through a period of chaos, and then the world returns to an orderly state at the end. As a result, the chaotic central portion of the plays are where people can rebel and act out of bounds. In particular, the oppressed and disempowered tend to behave in ways that are normally unacceptable but are permissible here during this comic disorder phase: mistaken identities result from characters cross-dressing or wearing disguises, young lovers sneak out at night to meet and end up in grave danger, servants act like masters and masters like servants – the order of the world is subverted and turned on its head. In Tartuffe, Dorine bosses around her employers, Damis rebels and is disowned, and Elmire is nearly raped. This period of disorder is where the oppressed can and often do rebel in comedies. However, with the restoration of order at the end of the play comes the restoration of proper roles – servants go back to serving, young lovers marry the appropriate party, and parents pass on leadership of the family or the society to the new generation. This restoration is often conservative – traditional comedy results in a happy ending where there is usually a wedding or celebration. Yet, traditional comedies can also be reformative, permitting the oppressed to carry on the knowledge or power gained in the disorder phase.
Eileen: How does a play about women’s rights not turn the idea of powerful women into a joke?
Heather: Great question. I guess in this case, I’d have to say because the play is not actually about women’s rights, though I think you can make a compelling argument for a feminist treatment. Molière was poking fun at the dominant culture of his time, which was a patriarchy with a penchant for religious misogyny. As such, the butts of his jokes are largely the men in the play. What better way to show how out of control his men are than to contrast them with sane, clever, and intelligent women? We laugh at the wild machinations the women are forced to go through in order to function in this out-of-kilter masculine world. It’s a technique as old as theatre itself. Just look at Aristophanes’s Lysistrata. However, unlike Lysistrata, Tartuffe does not end with a restoration of traditionally gendered roles as a means of terminating the comic chaos – particularly in Bolt’s translation. Molière’s deus ex machina clarifies that the King (or in our production, Queen) has the power and wisdom to save the day. Though forgiven, Orgon remains as out of control as ever and there is every reason to believe that Elmire and Dorine will continue to work behind his back to solve all of the problems he creates.