Tartuffe

Tartuffe is one of Moliere’s funniest and most controversial comedies. Although it was banned by the Church and led to the playwright’s imprisonment, Moliere, as he did in many of his comedies, wrote the play as an indictment of the bourgeoisie, not religion.

According to director and adapter Jeff Cohen, Tartuffe is a swindler who could have donned the mantle of any role to dupe his victims. That he picked religion in this instance is due to how easily his bourgeois victim – Orgon – is duped by his pious charade. It is Orgon who Moliere is bent on skewering, not the Church.

Jeff Cohen’s new American adaptation, written in verse and rhyming couplets, sets the play in New York City in an earlier depression-era – the 1930s. His adaptation seeks to employ a particularly American idiom – transposing Moliere’s social satire to its American equivalent. In our own present time of outlandish wealth, dashed fortunes, and Bernie Madoff-like swindlers, what better era to look back on than the Great Depression of the 1930s. Moliere spun his comedy from the stock characters of Commedia, and Mr. Cohen spins his from the golden era of American comedians and films.

DOG RUN REP (Producer) is a non-profit company thrilled to be contributing to the cultural revitalization of Lower Manhattan.  Formerly known as Worth Street Theater Company, Dog Run Rep has presented award-winning new plays, classics and revivals and has been an important breeding ground for new and important voices in the theater.

Winter Theatre at South Street Seaport is part of Seaport Semester, an eclectic series of classes, performances and programming created for infants, families and seniors, alike, and made possible with the support of General Growth Properties in conjunction with an array of community-based partners, including, but not limited to, Church Street School for Music and Art, Dog Run Rep Theater, Downtown Babies, Montauk Theater Productions, Seaport Music Radio and Tada! Youth Theater.

The Seaport Semester activities run through June 2009.