The Dog-Run Repertory Theatre Company presents
Tartuffe
Friday, March 06, 2009 through Sunday, March 29, 2009
IN DEPRESSION-ERA NEW YORK CITY –
SOCIALITES GET DUPED BY CON MAN!
Length: 2 hrs 30 mins
Intermission: Yes
Seating: General Admission
You choose your seats when you get to the theater.
IN DEPRESSION-ERA NEW YORK CITY –
SOCIALITES GET DUPED BY CON MAN!
Dog Run Rep
Proudly Presents
TARTUFFE
Adapted and Directed by
JEFF COHEN
Featuring
KEITH BUTERBAUGH, CHRISTINA DICICCO, &
TOM FORD
With
KATIA ASCHE AARON COSTA GANIS DEANNA HENSON
SUSAN JEFFRIES BRIAN LINDEN ROB MAITNER
MARK DEFRANCIS JASPER SOFFER
FOUR-WEEK LIMITED ENGAGEMENT
MARCH 6 – APRIL 5, 2009 @SEAPORT!
OPENING NIGHT IS MONDAY, MARCH 9 AT 7 P.M.
TICKETS ON SALE NOW AT SMARTTIX.COM
DOG RUN REP is pleased to announce, as part of the South Street Seaport Winter Theatre Season, a new American adaption of Moliere’s classic comedy TARTUFFE, directed by Jeff Cohen. TARTUFFE will play a five-week limited engagement @Seaport (210 Front Street), presented, in part, through the generous support of General Growth Properties. Performances begin Friday, March 6 and continue Saturday, April 5. Opening Night is Monday, March 9 (8 p.m.).
Press Performances: Saturday, March 7 @ 2 p.m. & 8 p.m. Sunday, March 8 @ 7 p.m. | Monday, March 9 @ 8 p.m.
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 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 George 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.
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The production stars Keith Buterbaugh (Company, Phantom of the Opera) as Orgon, Christina DeCicco (National Tour of Wicked, 2008 Barrymore Award Recipient) as Elmire, and Tom Ford (Broadway and National Tour of By Jeeves, 2000 Best Actor Award NY Int’l Fringe Festival). Rounding out the cast are Katia Asche, Aaron Costa Ganis, Mark DeFrancis, Deanna Henson, Susan Jeffries, Brian Linden, Rob Maitner, and Jasper Soffer.
The production features scenic design by Alexis Distler, costume design by Vanessa Leuck, and lighting design by Jay Scott. Donavan Dolan is the stage manager.
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TARTUFFE plays the following schedule through Saturday, April 5:
Friday, March 6 @ 8 p.m.
Saturday, March 7 @ 2 p.m. & 8 p.m.
Sunday, March 8 @ 7 p.m.
Monday, March 9 @ 7 p.m.
Friday, March 13 @ 7 p.m.
Saturday, March 14 @ 8 p.m.
Sunday, March 15 @ 7 p.m.
Wednesday, March 18 @ 8 p.m.
Friday, March 20 @ 8 p.m.
Saturday, March 21 @ 2 p.m.
Sunday, March 22 @ 7 p.m.
Wednesday, March 25 @ 8 p.m.
Friday, March 27 @ 8 p.m.
Saturday, March 28 @ 8 p.m.
Sunday, March 29 @ 7 p.m.
Tickets for all performances are $18. There is also a “Seaport Season Pass” for $40, which is good for admission to every performance at the South Street Seaport Winter Theatre Season and can be purchased at www.dogrunrep.org.
For tickets, call Smarttix at 212-868-4444 or on the web at www.smarttix.com.
For information and a complete performance schedule, go to the Dog Run Rep website at www.dogrunrep.org.
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BIOGRAPHIES
JEFF COHEN (Playwright & Director) is the founder and artistic director of New York’s acclaimed and award-winning Worth Street Theater Company and Dog Run Repertory Theatre Company. His newest play The Soap Myth has been optioned by producer Pat Blake (The Exonerated) and is slated for an Off-Broadway premiere in the Spring. His play Men Of Clay was selected Best New Play of 2005 by the Baltimore City Paper and his adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, set in West Virginia - Uncle Jack - was published in the anthology Playing With Canons and excerpted in The Best Stage Monologues, 2007 (Men’s and Women’s editions). In 1990, his adaptation of The Seagull, set in The Hamptons, featured the New York stage debut of Laura Linney. He has directed at some of Off Broadway’s most prestigious theatres including the Joseph Papp Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Town Hall, Classic Stage Company, Aaron Davis Hall and Theatre Row. His productions have been named to the annual Ten Best lists of The New York Times, The New York Post, Entertainment Weekly, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, The Star-Ledger, The Boston Globe and The Baltimore City Paper and have garnered such honors as the Drama Desk Award, the GLAAD Media Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Drama League Award, the Obie Award and the Lucille Lortel Award. He has helped launch the careers of such highly touted young playwrights as Christopher Shinn (Four), Hilary Bettis (American Girls) and Tristine Skyler (The Moonlight Room), and such actors as Laura Linney, Michael Ealy (Barbershop), Ella Joyce (Roc) and Kathryn Hahn (“Crossing Jordan”).
ALEXIS DISTLER (scenic design) recently received her MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She has designed for such directors as Daniel Fish, Billy Porter, Michael Sexton and Michael Bush and has assisted such designers as Tony Walton, Scott Pask, Eugene Lee, Heidi Ettiger and Beowulf Boritt.
VANESSA LEUCK (costume) assisted on Disney Live’s Mickey’s Enchanted Storybook and The Little Mermaid, Follies at City Center and Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. She won the OOBR Award for Idiot’s Delight at Vital Theatre Company. Other Off Broadway designs include The Lady Swims Today for TADA and Two Brothers Who Are Not Brothers at The Player’s Theatre.
JAY SCOTT (lighting) most recently assisted Richard Pilbrow on A Tale of Two Cities. He has extensive Off and Off-Off Broadway credits and has a BFA from SUNY Purchase.
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.
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Excerpt
ORGON Cleante – stop right there!
You’re deriding a man you do not know –
CLEANTE I may not know him but his type I know:
He’s a phony – I’ve come across others!
ORGON Just wait til you meet him, you’ll be like brothers!
To know Tartuffe! I can see him, I can!
He’s a man who – a man who – He’s a wonderful man!
To follow Tartuffe is to be reborn
And regard the sins of this world with scorn.
I owe so much to Tartuffe, my soul’s been freed!
With his instruction, I’m transformed indeed
From the pitfalls of life, from fam’ly ties –
Y’know my children, mother and wife could die
And I would not feel one moment’s pain!
CLEANTE You’re mad as a hatter, you’ve gone insane!
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