After Tartuffe
by Judy Klass
A reimagining of Molière’s Tartuffe, set in a Christian Fundamentalist post-apocalyptic America. The population has been decimated by the super-strain of the Avian Flu – stolen from a lab, probably by Fundamentalists. Oral, a rich businessman, has opened his home to a former megachurch pastor, disgraced in sex scandals: the Reverend Chadwick Pusser. Oral’s son Daniel cannot be free with Tyler, the guy he loves, with Pusser around, planting hidden cameras. Daniel reads SF alternate histories and suspects his own world is an aberration. He asks the website oracle.net for the original draft of Molière’s play Tartuffe – the one that was banned, before Molière watered the play down. Daniel thinks if he can get a pdf of the original, the universe will shift back to what it should be. Tyler’s older brother Vaughn is engaged to Daniel’s younger sister Mary-Anne – but Oral decides to force Mary-Anne to marry Reverend Pusser, horrifying her. Pusser tells Oral to control his women; he cites Lot as the kind of upright man the Lord smiles on. Oral won’t listen to truth when Reverend Pusser makes a pass at Oral’s wife Alma, or hear the outspoken housekeeper, Doreen, who denounces Pusser and tries to get Mary-Anne to stand up for herself. Daniel rejects a pass from Pusser also … and it seems that there is no end to Pusser’s hypocrisy or to Oral’s gullibility … but the people who see through the evangelical con man keep on fighting for truth, and for change.
- Cast Size: 5M 4W
- Running Time: 90+ minutes
- Royalty Rate: $75 per performance
Sample Coming Soon
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About the Playwright
Judy Klass: Eight of Judy full-length plays have been produced onstage. Her full-length play Cell is published by Samuel French/Concord. Her full-length play Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One won the Dorothy Silver Award. Her full-length play Country Fried Murder won the S.O.P.S. competition and was produced at the Shawnee Playhouse in Pennsylvania. Quarantine Players subsequently produced it as a podcast/video recording. In all, two of Judy’s full-length plays and seven of her one-act plays have been produced as podcasts. Thirty-nine of her short plays have been produced, many with multiple productions all over the US. A few have been produced in the UK, Ireland and Canada. Three of her short plays are published, each as a stand-alone script, by Brooklyn Publishers. Her short plays have appeared in Seven Hills Review, Ponder Review, some scripts literary magazine and in anthologies like The Art of the One-Act and The Best New Ten-Minute Plays 2021. b
Review After Tartuffe.