Tartuffefied!

Gus is the cat at the theatre door.

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a "scene workshop" based on Moliere's Tartuffe. We used as a script Richard Wilbur's translation into rhymed couplets. If, like me, you didn't know what a "scene workshop" was, in our case it consisted of eight actors learning a selection of scenes from the play, and presenting them as a play with no special costumes and only a very minimal set, with a narrator filling in the missing details.

Somewhat to my surprise, a bunch of people actually showed up, and, allegedly, payed money to see this.

I hadn't been on stage for twenty years or so, and was much older than most of the rest of the cast, so I was appropriately terrified. Fortunately, I managed to remember most of my lines and the audience didn't throw fruit or even boo.

It was a heck of a lot of fun.

Of course my head is still filled with all these rhymed couplets.

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