Sat, Jul 04, 2009
 Jonathan Hicks, left, and Julia Graham rehearse for UA Repertory Theatre's upcoming Moliére comedy "Tartuffe."
mamta popat / Arizona Daily Star
A1 Communications Cable Techs Health Care Sierra Tucson Eating Disorders Program Coordinator Trades/Construction RANCHO RESORT MAINTANANCE POSITION Accent'Tartuffe' translated, directed by UA's DixonArizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.06.2006
When Harold Dixon set out to translate Moliére's comedic play "Tartuffe" from French to English in the early 1970s, he wasn't looking for notoriety.
"Initially, it was an exercise to see if I could even do it," said the University of Arizona professor, who spent several months in California at the University of Redlands as an undergraduate toiling over the famed French playwright's text. "I had studied in France and thought I should try this."
Thirty-six years later, Dixon is reviving his translation for UA's Arizona Repertory Theatre and directing the production.
He spent a couple of months last winter revising the adaptation, double-checking lines and editing to make for a tighter performance.
But nothing has been lost from his original work, Dixon says.
"There is a kind of feel to Moliére's language that is delightfully conversational and down to earth," he added. "But when others have translated it to English, the text has become hifalutin. This play is performed in rhymed couplets so they use a lot of big words because they are easier to rhyme. The language gets dense and obtuse and it loses some of the spirit of the original.
"In my translation, I've got anachronisms and phrases that didn't exist in 17th-century France. I look for equivalents that might be more accessible to a modern ear. My goal is to find a new audience for people who don't know anything about it so they can find an appreciation for Moliére and his work."
Considered one of Moliére's masterpieces, "Tartuffe" follows the play's namesake as he poses as a man of devout faith and manages to work his way into the home of a wealthy French family.
Orgon, the head of the family, feels Tartuffe can do no wrong even if the rest of his clan has their suspicions.
That is, until Orgon discovers his holy man is not all he is cracked up to be.
Aside from his own translation of the work, Dixon said he has taken on several other challenges for this production.
For one, he has kept the play in its original time period, 17th-century France during the rule of King Louis the XIV. Dixon says oftentimes Moliére's plays are adapted to different time periods but that is not a common practice at the UA.
"It's a training thing," he said. "We want the students here to learn about these periods in school. If we put the play in a spaceship or a modern living room, you remove the element of having to learn about the period."
Dixon has also added several improvised intermezzo performances for between acts.
Intermezzo performances are short plays that serve as comic parallels to the issues raised in productions. They were big in the Italian Commedia dell'Arte style that had heavily influenced Moliére's.
Dixon said that with people like Jerry Falwell and Mel Gibson out there, there is no shortage of examples of contemporary religious hypocrisy.
"We had more ideas than we could put in the intermezzi," Dixon said. "I thought if we could find contemporary parallels, we might find a way to get people to think deeper about what the play was talking about. There is a serious point to them, but we hope they are funny, too."
It's all an effort to make the playwright's work clearer.
"Americans have almost no experience with Moliére, so it is a matter of fishing around trying to figure out what's the best way to get them into it," said Dixon.
"You don't want to be gimmicky, but you want something that draws them in and says here is a playwright worth knowing."
● Contact reporter Gerald M. Gay at 573-4137 or ggay@azstarnet.com.
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