‘Tartuffe: the imposter’
The Tiger Theatre Company attended a play at Texarkana College
Photo by Truth Dukes
The Tiger Theatre Company attended a showing of “Tartuffe” at Texarkana College. A comedic classic, the play is well known and a staple in theater.
December 2, 2022
The curtain falls. The audience claps. The show ends. On Nov. 17, Tiger Theatre Company went to see a performance of “Tartuffe: the impostor” at Texarkana College.
The show was attended by stage actors and other students in the class.
“There’s a family, and the dad is going through a midlife crisis,” junior Mary Warren said. “And he finds like this guy who is living out on the streets, and he takes him in.”
In Tartuffe, the titular character is welcomed into a man’s home and family and starts to slowly manipulate them out of their belongings.
“It was about a man, Tartuffe, living with a family, and how it caused disruption,” sophomore Xavier Briggs said.
The play was put on by TexRep at Texarkana College for students who wished to attend.
“It’s actually part of the DC classes curriculum,” theater teacher Bonnie Flieder said. “They offer one classic play a year for students to come and watch. This year it is Tartuffe and the students will do an analysis paper over it.”
The play is a French comedy, first being shown in 1664. It’s considered to be a classic and a staple of theater.
“It was actually written 400 years ago,” Flieder said. “But they did a modernized version. It was very modern slang, had cell phones and talked about social media and things. That helped to take this message of sometimes the people you think are best for you are out to get you in the worst way. It helped to translate that message into something that kids can understand, because it was actually written in rhyming couplets.”
The cast had endless laughs, as the play was one of the oldest comedies.
“My favorite part was the jokes,” freshman Coy Ward said. “One of the jokes for the poet was talking about one of his poems. He was a really bad poet. Later on in the story, they got funnier and funnier, because it just got worse and worse and worse.”
Even though the play was comedic in nature, it had lessons that can easily be applied to real life.
“My main takeaway probably would be to make sure you know who you bring into your life and make sure you know who they are and not to be fully oblivious,” Warren said.
