MOLIÈRE by night; Jean-Baptiste Poquelin by day, the man was the greatest theatrical star of 17th-century French stage comedy. Although the sacred and secular authorities of the time often combined against him, the genius of Molière finally emerged to win him acclaim. Comedy had a long history before Molière, who employed most of its traditional forms, but he succeeded in inventing a new style that was based on a double vision of normal and abnormal seen in relation to each other — the comedy of the true opposed to the specious, the intelligent seen alongside the pedantic. An actor himself, Molière seems to have been incapable of visualizing any situation without animating and dramatizing it, often beyond the limits of probability. The course will first explore the temper of the age and of the populace in Paris before placing Molière the man in the middle of it. The course will study the texts of three of his greatest hits: “The School for Wives” (1662), “Tartuffe” (1664), and “The Misanthrope” (1666). Course members will have an opportunity to read aloud key scenes from the plays.
The greatest comic artists working centuries later in other media, such as Charlie Chaplin, are the true testimony to the freshness of Molière’s singular vision. Witness and relish mid–17th-century Parisian social veneer peeling away and revealing surprisingly real human beings! Class Limit: 18
Instructor Joseph Coté has been immersed in the theater world for more than 40 years as amateur and professional stage director, dramaturg, producer and actor. On stage, he has created more than 30 leading or featured roles in plays by such playwrights as Molière, Shakespeare, Coward, Wilde, Brecht, Ibsen, O'Neill, Chekhov, Albee, and Tennessee Williams. In 1994 his solo stage portrayal of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat to Budapest in 1944 who saved more than 100,000 Jews in the Holocaust, toured Hungary and Poland including performances at Auschwitz. Since 2019 Joseph has led more than 40 popular courses and single master classes with the Coastal and Midcoast Senior Colleges focusing on playwrights and their plays from the late 16th- to the mid-20th century. His popular Shakespeare courses and master classes have focused on the study of the journey of a single character through the single play within the greater landscape of the action. Joseph currently serves as the Vice President of the Coastal Senior College, the co-chair of the Media Outreach Committee and as a member of the Activities Committee.