Sisters. So many variations on a theme. In the year 1900, Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov wrote what would become one of his most famous plays for the Moscow Art Theatre. He titled the play “Three Sisters” and told the story of three sisters — Olga, Masha, and Irina — living in a provincial Russian town and longing for Moscow. Almost 300 years earlier in 1605, England’s greatest playwright and poet, William Shakespeare, wrote a play also about three sisters in pre-Roman Britain. He titled his play after their father, “King Lear.” The sisters — Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia — find themselves in a “love-test” as their aging father abruptly decides to divide his power and his land into three portions. The course will explore, compare, and contrast the different worlds of the two plays. More specifically, focus will remain on the reactions of the three sisters and the choices they make as their worlds turn.
Joseph will supply specific editions of the texts in advance, along with academic writings about each play, offering advance food for thought. Scenes from the plays will be read aloud by students keen to do so.
Instructor Joseph Coté has been keenly involved in amateur and professional theater off and on over the years as stage director, dramaturg, producer, and particularly as actor. On stage, he has been fortunate to be challenged by leading or featured roles in plays by Molière, Shakespeare, Coward, Wilde, Brecht, Feydeau, Christie, Ibsen, O'Neill, Chekhov, Albee, and Tennessee Williams. In 1994, his solo stage portrayal of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat to Budapest, who 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 groups of “curious seniors” at both the Coastal and Midcoast Senior Colleges in the exploration of all 39 of Shakespeare’s plays in either single introductory studies or in eight-session courses. He has included Marlowe, Jonson & later Moliere for comparative study. From the late 19th- and early 20th-century world of dramatic literature, Coté has directed student focus to the plays of Wilde, Shaw, and Coward. Joseph is currently the Vice President of the Coastal Senior College, co-chair of both the Media Outreach Committee and the Membership Committee, and a member of the Activities Committee.