The corsets are tight and the lights bright. Hair is curled and lines are rehearsed. As the house’s seats fill with a buzz of excitement and expectancy, the young actors at Manitou Springs High School prepare themselves for closing night of the play “Tartuffe”, which they have been working on for months.
“Tartuffe”, originally written in French, is a play written in verse by Moliere in 1669. There are a multitude of different translations, some keeping the writing style, some not. Wendy Harms is the lead director of all theater productions at MSHS. “The script was written in 1669, and I chose a translation because the original script is in French. I chose a translation that is written in verse, which is what Moliere’s play originally was like,” Harms said.
“Tartuffe” tells the story of a sly conman who pretends to be a man of god. The man, named Tartuffe, lies his way through people’s lives, taking over their conscience and using them for his own gain. He preaches about how pure he is, but steals and lies. Every actor creates a special connection with the characters they step into, but sometimes the script as well. “My personal connection to the script is mainly because of our current political climate and how relevant this play is because it is about a man being deceived by someone who claims to be holy to the point where his family is nearly torn apart by it,” Becket Wendell-Evans, a senior actor at MSHS said. “It’s just incredibly relevant, and I connected a lot to that.”
The difficulty of the script’s format was a big roadblock for some of the actors. It caused them to work even harder than usual, do research and play around with different acting styles. Even though it was hard and confusing most of the time, the actors pushed through and really showed just how tough they all are. “’Tartuffe’ is the play I’ve struggled the most with since I’ve been acting here because of its language and its rhyme scheme and the volume of lines and how some of the syntax is just slightly so off,” Wendell-Evans said.
Freshman Lilliana Sanders had a different view on the writing than Wendell-Evans. Sanders profited from the writing, using it to her advantage to portray more emotions through her words. “Surprisingly, especially with how many lines I had, the writing wasn’t terrible. It was really interesting because I learned a couple new words I didn’t know before,” Sanders said.
To go along with the complex formatting of the script, there are a multitude of words that the actors did not know, including some that were not even real. Both Sanders and Wendell-Evans had to dig deep and research different things around the time period to better their understanding of the script and their characters. “It was very interesting to research all these old words that I didn’t know,” Sanders said. “I didn’t have too many, but there were also some invented words in there that weren’t a part of my lines, but I looked at them anyways cause it’s cool.”
While “Tartuffe’s” cast was full of seniors that are leaving MSHS this year, a lot of the cast were freshmen. For Sanders and a bunch of her friends, this was their first play at the high school. Every role that an actor takes on is held close to their heart and becomes personal, especially when it is their first big role. “I don’t really relate to this story considering it’s about a weird hypocrite guy, but I don’t know, my character felt very special, especially since it was my first big role,” Sanders said. “I never really spoke out for myself as I should have, and she didn’t either, and that felt very easy to play because of just how it connected to my life. It was really cool to play her, especially with my first big role.”
Wendell-Evans has been doing theater since eighth grade when he was at Manitou Springs Middle School and has continued his acting throughout his high school career. Wendell-Evans has always gone above and beyond in his acting, earning a special place in the hearts and minds of teachers and students alike. The seniors leaving this year is a big loss felt in many hearts, including the senior’s own. For Wendell-Evans, it does not seem real quite yet. “This being my last performance hasn’t exactly sunk in yet,” Wendell-Evans said. “There were a few tears shed on the last night, especially because I’m the one who had the last line; and I kind of felt like I was the one who was ending it all, ending the dream and then the fun. But it hasn’t hit me yet.”
