upcoming Commissioned plays
The following events are directly related to KC MOlière: 400 in 2022. A community calendar of events hosted by other partners is provided on our events page. Submissions to the community calendar are welcome.
2021
Tartuffenthrope! (Crossing Cultures with Chouteau and the Osage) by Philip blue owl Hooser is a 35-minute comedy about Kansas City's origins. In 1821, when fur-trader François Chouteau settled at the confluence of rivers on the Osage land that is today's Kansas City, what if he used Molière to explain French culture to the First Nations? What if he couldn't totally recall what he learned about Molière in school? The misunderstandings are hilarious, but it all ends in cross-cultural understanding. Contact: LondreF@umkc.edu with this subject line on your email: CHOUTEAU BOOKING QUERY.
These programs are available to schools for a nominal $25 booking fee.
These programs are available to schools for a nominal $25 booking fee.
Interview with playwright Philip blue owl Hooser
By Margaret Shelby
(originally published in the Spring 2021 Newsletter)
Life is messy. Plays have order.
Sometimes a play shows us extreme chaos, yes, but a well-constructed play must have an order, even if it is an order all its own. That is what makes it art.
Philip blue owl Hooser, Kansas City playwright, has been commissioned to create just such art with his play Tartuffenmiserthrope! (sic) This new work asks Phil to pull together some unlikely threads, as we will see.
Artists, however, can find connections in unlikely places. At first glance they may seem unwieldy, obscure, or even zany, but an artist can discover and illuminate connections between ideas, events, thoughts, and peoples and it is here we find the magic of what Philip is conjuring.
Foremost, for Phil the love of Molière comes from the author’s humor. Phil grew up reading comedy poetry, aspiring to becoming a poet himself.
Hooser believes humor is what makes pain bearable. And he has been through some pain; most recently surgery to remove an unsaveable foot.
He comments on the experience this way; “As I was coming out of the anesthesia, a nurse asked me some questions, one of them was how tall was I? I said, ‘well, when I came in here I was 5’11”, but now… I’m a foot short!’”
“Finding the comedy to go along with the serious keeps me balanced,” he says.
Phil continues, “Themes in Molière plays such as the hypocrite of Tartuffe, the skinflint of the Miser, and the Misanthrope who hates everybody. All of the people around them are able to look at them and say ‘that’s an example of what I don’t want to be’.
“For me, that is an example of a thing I don’t want; to be ungrateful for the events and people in my life. I want to share with them and bring humor.
"There’s enough dark, crying in the world. I want to bring more laughter where I can”.
Even as a young writer Phil discovered his preferred form was narrative comedy.
“I like comedy. I like funny stuff. I wanted to know more about comedy. And as I spent more time writing, I decided I like stories. I want to know more about how stories work. How is it we put together stories, how can I put together more quality in a story? And comedy itself leads to a lot of really weird discussions like:
“There is just so much to it. Who said, 'Dying is easy, comedy is hard?'”
(Trivia fans take note: it turns out it is variously attributed, but Edmund Gwenn seems heavily favored. You know Mr. Gwenn; Santa from 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street.)
“Yeah, it’s one of the things I’ve always believed, that comedy, as difficult as it is, is one of the best things for us, ya know 'laughter is the best medicine.' Some scientific research actually bears that out. There are things that we get from comedy and from laughing that we just don’t get in any other form.”
The venerable Mayo Clinic’s website agrees with this, publishing an article advising ways to manage stress with laughter.
Phil agrees, “Yes. I’ve done customer service, box office things and know that if you smile when you answer the phone people can actually hear the smile in your voice. The more I was able to start off the conversation with a smile, the better things seemed to go. Smile even though your heart is breaking, laugh clown laugh.”
Would it be a bit intimidating to write a play that was even tangentially attached to Molière? Perhaps, but as Phil is approaching it, the results sound like just good fun.
“It will be about a 40-minute play. Fits well into a class period. I worked for years at The Coterie, and I learned a lot about young people. How long they can sustain their connection to something.
“What we realized was it was actually the same for adults. We adults don’t actually have better attention spans; we are better at hiding our boredom.
“That’s the thing I actually love about young audiences: they will be completely honest with you about what they are watching. Adults will lie to you as they are watching.
“It’s a thing that makes you work a little bit harder: to say I know this has gone on for about 10 minutes so I need to change that. When you get to the 45-minute mark, you need to have something big change the circumstances.
“Working in children’s theatre has taught me a lot, and I apply it to any of the playwriting I do but especially when I’m writing for youth. It is a rule I have to enforce on myself.”
And what is this play about, exactly?
“We wanted to find a way to connect these things; Chouteau founding of KC, the Native community, and Molière.
“Well, what if Chouteau, his wife, and his brother, in an effort to foster good relations with the local native community, were to say to the tribal elders, ‘We can bring you something you don’t have; we can bring you theatre.’
“Native Americans, and I’m a member of the Choctaw Nation, we didn’t really develop theatre. Storytelling, yes. Wonderful storytelling. Sometimes there would be dances, but there was nothing people today would recognize as theatre.
“So I thought, well, what if they said ‘we can bring you things from our culture and theatre is one of them’? Chouteau’s idea is they are going to present Molière’s funniest, greatest play. Comedy connects with people. We are more likely to laugh at the same things because some things are universally funny.
“As it begins, François Chouteau comes out and starts performing a bit of Tartuffe. But, he has to stop and explain to the tribe members what is going on, and that becomes a source of confusion.
“He must say, ‘I’m acting, which means that I’m not being myself, even though I’m still myself, and I’m also playing someone else’. And then his wife comes in and she is playing one of the roles. Unfortunately the role that she is playing is in a completely different play, because, as we find out, they did not get together and talk about which play they were doing. They just agreed to ‘Molière’s GREATEST play.’ And they each have a different idea of who and what that is.
“Of course, when his brother comes in, he’s doing yet a third play. So they have to sort all of that out and still try to reach some kind of happy conclusion so that the Native American audience will let them set up shop, have a settlement, and turn it into Kansas City.”
Hence the title of Tartuffenmiserthrope! (sic) It’s Tartuffe and the Miser and the Misanthrope.
To make it even more fun, it all has a rhyme scheme. When the Chouteau troupe is acting, they are in rhyme. When they’re not acting, there is no rhyme scheme.
“As a tribute to the plays of Molière that do rhyme, yes, but especially to those wonderful, wonderful translations and adaptations of them by Richard Wilbur, which have just those hilarious rhymes in them.”
Was the Chouteau family theatrical? We don’t really know.
“I’m not basing the characters on what the Chouteau’s were like as people. It’s not necessarily their historical personalities. This is creating a fiction of them. It COULD be true.”
Of course. Phil is not doing a documentary on this family. He is writing a play, by no means suggesting the Chouteau family really did a Molière play for the local tribal elders. That probably did not happen. Because a literal recreation of someone’s entire life would be, well, their entire life.
Life is messy. Plays have order.
By Margaret Shelby
(originally published in the Spring 2021 Newsletter)
Life is messy. Plays have order.
Sometimes a play shows us extreme chaos, yes, but a well-constructed play must have an order, even if it is an order all its own. That is what makes it art.
Philip blue owl Hooser, Kansas City playwright, has been commissioned to create just such art with his play Tartuffenmiserthrope! (sic) This new work asks Phil to pull together some unlikely threads, as we will see.
Artists, however, can find connections in unlikely places. At first glance they may seem unwieldy, obscure, or even zany, but an artist can discover and illuminate connections between ideas, events, thoughts, and peoples and it is here we find the magic of what Philip is conjuring.
Foremost, for Phil the love of Molière comes from the author’s humor. Phil grew up reading comedy poetry, aspiring to becoming a poet himself.
Hooser believes humor is what makes pain bearable. And he has been through some pain; most recently surgery to remove an unsaveable foot.
He comments on the experience this way; “As I was coming out of the anesthesia, a nurse asked me some questions, one of them was how tall was I? I said, ‘well, when I came in here I was 5’11”, but now… I’m a foot short!’”
“Finding the comedy to go along with the serious keeps me balanced,” he says.
Phil continues, “Themes in Molière plays such as the hypocrite of Tartuffe, the skinflint of the Miser, and the Misanthrope who hates everybody. All of the people around them are able to look at them and say ‘that’s an example of what I don’t want to be’.
“For me, that is an example of a thing I don’t want; to be ungrateful for the events and people in my life. I want to share with them and bring humor.
"There’s enough dark, crying in the world. I want to bring more laughter where I can”.
Even as a young writer Phil discovered his preferred form was narrative comedy.
“I like comedy. I like funny stuff. I wanted to know more about comedy. And as I spent more time writing, I decided I like stories. I want to know more about how stories work. How is it we put together stories, how can I put together more quality in a story? And comedy itself leads to a lot of really weird discussions like:
- Which is the funniest letter?
- Is it better with a little pause before this?
- Should I pause after that part in telling the joke?
“There is just so much to it. Who said, 'Dying is easy, comedy is hard?'”
(Trivia fans take note: it turns out it is variously attributed, but Edmund Gwenn seems heavily favored. You know Mr. Gwenn; Santa from 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street.)
“Yeah, it’s one of the things I’ve always believed, that comedy, as difficult as it is, is one of the best things for us, ya know 'laughter is the best medicine.' Some scientific research actually bears that out. There are things that we get from comedy and from laughing that we just don’t get in any other form.”
The venerable Mayo Clinic’s website agrees with this, publishing an article advising ways to manage stress with laughter.
Phil agrees, “Yes. I’ve done customer service, box office things and know that if you smile when you answer the phone people can actually hear the smile in your voice. The more I was able to start off the conversation with a smile, the better things seemed to go. Smile even though your heart is breaking, laugh clown laugh.”
Would it be a bit intimidating to write a play that was even tangentially attached to Molière? Perhaps, but as Phil is approaching it, the results sound like just good fun.
“It will be about a 40-minute play. Fits well into a class period. I worked for years at The Coterie, and I learned a lot about young people. How long they can sustain their connection to something.
“What we realized was it was actually the same for adults. We adults don’t actually have better attention spans; we are better at hiding our boredom.
“That’s the thing I actually love about young audiences: they will be completely honest with you about what they are watching. Adults will lie to you as they are watching.
“It’s a thing that makes you work a little bit harder: to say I know this has gone on for about 10 minutes so I need to change that. When you get to the 45-minute mark, you need to have something big change the circumstances.
“Working in children’s theatre has taught me a lot, and I apply it to any of the playwriting I do but especially when I’m writing for youth. It is a rule I have to enforce on myself.”
And what is this play about, exactly?
“We wanted to find a way to connect these things; Chouteau founding of KC, the Native community, and Molière.
“Well, what if Chouteau, his wife, and his brother, in an effort to foster good relations with the local native community, were to say to the tribal elders, ‘We can bring you something you don’t have; we can bring you theatre.’
“Native Americans, and I’m a member of the Choctaw Nation, we didn’t really develop theatre. Storytelling, yes. Wonderful storytelling. Sometimes there would be dances, but there was nothing people today would recognize as theatre.
“So I thought, well, what if they said ‘we can bring you things from our culture and theatre is one of them’? Chouteau’s idea is they are going to present Molière’s funniest, greatest play. Comedy connects with people. We are more likely to laugh at the same things because some things are universally funny.
“As it begins, François Chouteau comes out and starts performing a bit of Tartuffe. But, he has to stop and explain to the tribe members what is going on, and that becomes a source of confusion.
“He must say, ‘I’m acting, which means that I’m not being myself, even though I’m still myself, and I’m also playing someone else’. And then his wife comes in and she is playing one of the roles. Unfortunately the role that she is playing is in a completely different play, because, as we find out, they did not get together and talk about which play they were doing. They just agreed to ‘Molière’s GREATEST play.’ And they each have a different idea of who and what that is.
“Of course, when his brother comes in, he’s doing yet a third play. So they have to sort all of that out and still try to reach some kind of happy conclusion so that the Native American audience will let them set up shop, have a settlement, and turn it into Kansas City.”
Hence the title of Tartuffenmiserthrope! (sic) It’s Tartuffe and the Miser and the Misanthrope.
To make it even more fun, it all has a rhyme scheme. When the Chouteau troupe is acting, they are in rhyme. When they’re not acting, there is no rhyme scheme.
“As a tribute to the plays of Molière that do rhyme, yes, but especially to those wonderful, wonderful translations and adaptations of them by Richard Wilbur, which have just those hilarious rhymes in them.”
Was the Chouteau family theatrical? We don’t really know.
“I’m not basing the characters on what the Chouteau’s were like as people. It’s not necessarily their historical personalities. This is creating a fiction of them. It COULD be true.”
Of course. Phil is not doing a documentary on this family. He is writing a play, by no means suggesting the Chouteau family really did a Molière play for the local tribal elders. That probably did not happen. Because a literal recreation of someone’s entire life would be, well, their entire life.
Life is messy. Plays have order.
Nathan Bowman to Direct Tartuffenthrope!
by Margaret Shelby
(originally published in the Summer 2021 newsletter)
Last month we interviewed playwright Philip blue owl Hooser about his commissioned new work Tartuffenthrope! for KC MOlière: 400 in 2022 and the François Chouteau & Native American Heritage Fountain unveiling scheduled for July 24th.
On arrive! (We’re almost there!)
This month we are thrilled to introduce Nathan Bowman, the director for Philip’s play. Nathan is the Co-Founder and Producing Artistic Director of the Kansas City Public Theatre, and holds his Ph.D in theatre from the University of Kansas. He has worked extensively with outdoor productions and brings a wealth of expertise to this project. We talked to him recently about his approach to Tartuffenthrope!, and his plans for the July 24th outdoor performance.
New work is always exciting, but what interests you most about this new play?
What I really enjoy is how well Phil can emulate the Molière style. His ability to write in couplets, his winking “asides” to the audience, and how his characters must actually perform Molière. All this opens the script up to a lot of physicality which I love. My initial instinct is to create as much of an actual Molière play as possible, I want it to feel like it is a Molière piece. I also want to maintain this balance that Phil strikes very well; anytime you write a play with white settlers talking about their culture with Native Americans you have to walk this line. Phil and myself are both Native American and so perhaps we are equipped to do this.
Speak to that. Not everyone knows you have Native heritage.
That’s right, I am Wyandotte. Phil is Choctaw. But I don’t want it to seem like the French are just here to teach the Natives “high culture” and how appreciative are we that the French came here and taught us these things. The point is there is something cross-cultural in the kinds of stories Molière tells. We never want it to seem we are saying one culture is superior or supplants the other one. And Phil does a really good job of doing that in his text, especially the character of Standing Bear. Standing Bear gets a lot to say and we get to hear Standing Bear’s perspective, so I think the script walks that balance and as I approach this with actors we want to make sure we maintain that balance. After all, encounters between Native Americans and French fur trappers were all contemporary to events with Molière. Not that the Chouteaus were contemporary to Molière, they were not, not by two centuries, but they would have certainly known something about Molière, even if they themselves did not attend theatre in Paris. And really, in all likelihood the historical Chouteau family and anybody living along the American river frontier wouldn’t have much access to actual French “high culture” anyway. But the Chouteaus started in St. Louis, which was obviously a French city, so it is quite possible they did have some knowledge of French theatre, we don’t really know. But we have decided to embrace the notion that they did.
Well, I'm kind of a history geek, so I love this stuff, but maybe not everyone does. Beyond the history of French/European settlements in this area, how is this play relevant to us? Why should we care?
Yeah. One of the things Phil does really well with this play is to take a look at what you do when you encounter the “other”. Why a play like this is relevant right now is there is so much “othering” in society going on. “Those people are different from me, so they are my enemy” kind of thing. Not even necessarily across cultures, just within America we tend to other people on the other side of the political spectrum. So how you approach different cultures and how you approach “the other” is an ongoing question that I think we are specifically dealing with now. This play asks that question from an historical perspective that didn’t end so well for one of those sides. Obviously we know what happened to all of the Native American tribes of this country, and because of that it is really easy to take a very cynical approach when it comes to this idea of encountering the other. But one of the great things Phil does with this play is he takes the idea of encountering the other and just removes the cynicism from it. Like there can be a sincere exchange of culture and ideas. And the idea of being able to have that exchange with other people, I think we need to have more hope that that is possible without all the cynicism. And I think this play does that really well.
Yes, when I read it I felt everyone here is an honest broker. No one is trying to just turn the other into, what, cannon fodder?
Right, and knowing what happened to the tribes in the area, following the story with the perspective that we have hope things like that don’t happen again. The story shows things could have gone differently because we didn’t start out this way.
And using Molière is a unique lens to tell this story because this city does have a very French origin story which most people don’t know about. So using this French play to tell this story of first encounter, it’s very interesting. And Phil does it very well, and in rhyming couplets, no less. When I first started reading it I was surprised but then thought, ‘okay, yeah, here we go!’
And there is going to be a reading of it this week. Nicole Green is presenting it as her Sunday Script Circle offering this week, in collaboration with KC MOlière: 400 in 2022.
Find it here: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/sundayscriptcircle
That’s going to be great, to get to hear it read.
How long a show is it? Will we see the entire piece?
If it is as fast paced as it reads - and I’d like it to be - I’d say about half an hour in length. Yes, we will do the entire piece at the Fountain unveiling.
The venue is outdoor which is something you are familiar with. What are you looking forward to and what are you dreading?
Well, the biggest outdoor production issue, at least in my experience, has always been sound. It’s inevitably very complicated. I drive past the site all the time and think ground area mics will work. That allows the actors the physicality I want without them worrying about body mics. Plus outdoor spaces always feel so much bigger than an indoor theatre.
But that lends itself to the period style of Molière, a much bigger, broader style of delivery so that will be fun. That is what I am looking forward to the most, working with the actors and keeping that balance with good, fast pacing. We will keep our costuming in the period style, too. Not elaborate, these are frontiers people, not courtiers, but still something that suggests the era.
KCParks and Rec are planning lots of additional activities during this event. They just announced the details; Native American dancers, period banjo and fiddle music, fur trapper re-enactors… it all promises to be exciting!
Find it here: https://kcparks.org/event/kcmo-bicentennial/
And that’s the challenging part about an outdoor venue. There’s always all the things you didn’t think about.
Kind of like it’s a new frontier.
Every time.
by Margaret Shelby
(originally published in the Summer 2021 newsletter)
Last month we interviewed playwright Philip blue owl Hooser about his commissioned new work Tartuffenthrope! for KC MOlière: 400 in 2022 and the François Chouteau & Native American Heritage Fountain unveiling scheduled for July 24th.
On arrive! (We’re almost there!)
This month we are thrilled to introduce Nathan Bowman, the director for Philip’s play. Nathan is the Co-Founder and Producing Artistic Director of the Kansas City Public Theatre, and holds his Ph.D in theatre from the University of Kansas. He has worked extensively with outdoor productions and brings a wealth of expertise to this project. We talked to him recently about his approach to Tartuffenthrope!, and his plans for the July 24th outdoor performance.
New work is always exciting, but what interests you most about this new play?
What I really enjoy is how well Phil can emulate the Molière style. His ability to write in couplets, his winking “asides” to the audience, and how his characters must actually perform Molière. All this opens the script up to a lot of physicality which I love. My initial instinct is to create as much of an actual Molière play as possible, I want it to feel like it is a Molière piece. I also want to maintain this balance that Phil strikes very well; anytime you write a play with white settlers talking about their culture with Native Americans you have to walk this line. Phil and myself are both Native American and so perhaps we are equipped to do this.
Speak to that. Not everyone knows you have Native heritage.
That’s right, I am Wyandotte. Phil is Choctaw. But I don’t want it to seem like the French are just here to teach the Natives “high culture” and how appreciative are we that the French came here and taught us these things. The point is there is something cross-cultural in the kinds of stories Molière tells. We never want it to seem we are saying one culture is superior or supplants the other one. And Phil does a really good job of doing that in his text, especially the character of Standing Bear. Standing Bear gets a lot to say and we get to hear Standing Bear’s perspective, so I think the script walks that balance and as I approach this with actors we want to make sure we maintain that balance. After all, encounters between Native Americans and French fur trappers were all contemporary to events with Molière. Not that the Chouteaus were contemporary to Molière, they were not, not by two centuries, but they would have certainly known something about Molière, even if they themselves did not attend theatre in Paris. And really, in all likelihood the historical Chouteau family and anybody living along the American river frontier wouldn’t have much access to actual French “high culture” anyway. But the Chouteaus started in St. Louis, which was obviously a French city, so it is quite possible they did have some knowledge of French theatre, we don’t really know. But we have decided to embrace the notion that they did.
Well, I'm kind of a history geek, so I love this stuff, but maybe not everyone does. Beyond the history of French/European settlements in this area, how is this play relevant to us? Why should we care?
Yeah. One of the things Phil does really well with this play is to take a look at what you do when you encounter the “other”. Why a play like this is relevant right now is there is so much “othering” in society going on. “Those people are different from me, so they are my enemy” kind of thing. Not even necessarily across cultures, just within America we tend to other people on the other side of the political spectrum. So how you approach different cultures and how you approach “the other” is an ongoing question that I think we are specifically dealing with now. This play asks that question from an historical perspective that didn’t end so well for one of those sides. Obviously we know what happened to all of the Native American tribes of this country, and because of that it is really easy to take a very cynical approach when it comes to this idea of encountering the other. But one of the great things Phil does with this play is he takes the idea of encountering the other and just removes the cynicism from it. Like there can be a sincere exchange of culture and ideas. And the idea of being able to have that exchange with other people, I think we need to have more hope that that is possible without all the cynicism. And I think this play does that really well.
Yes, when I read it I felt everyone here is an honest broker. No one is trying to just turn the other into, what, cannon fodder?
Right, and knowing what happened to the tribes in the area, following the story with the perspective that we have hope things like that don’t happen again. The story shows things could have gone differently because we didn’t start out this way.
And using Molière is a unique lens to tell this story because this city does have a very French origin story which most people don’t know about. So using this French play to tell this story of first encounter, it’s very interesting. And Phil does it very well, and in rhyming couplets, no less. When I first started reading it I was surprised but then thought, ‘okay, yeah, here we go!’
And there is going to be a reading of it this week. Nicole Green is presenting it as her Sunday Script Circle offering this week, in collaboration with KC MOlière: 400 in 2022.
Find it here: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/sundayscriptcircle
That’s going to be great, to get to hear it read.
How long a show is it? Will we see the entire piece?
If it is as fast paced as it reads - and I’d like it to be - I’d say about half an hour in length. Yes, we will do the entire piece at the Fountain unveiling.
The venue is outdoor which is something you are familiar with. What are you looking forward to and what are you dreading?
Well, the biggest outdoor production issue, at least in my experience, has always been sound. It’s inevitably very complicated. I drive past the site all the time and think ground area mics will work. That allows the actors the physicality I want without them worrying about body mics. Plus outdoor spaces always feel so much bigger than an indoor theatre.
But that lends itself to the period style of Molière, a much bigger, broader style of delivery so that will be fun. That is what I am looking forward to the most, working with the actors and keeping that balance with good, fast pacing. We will keep our costuming in the period style, too. Not elaborate, these are frontiers people, not courtiers, but still something that suggests the era.
KCParks and Rec are planning lots of additional activities during this event. They just announced the details; Native American dancers, period banjo and fiddle music, fur trapper re-enactors… it all promises to be exciting!
Find it here: https://kcparks.org/event/kcmo-bicentennial/
And that’s the challenging part about an outdoor venue. There’s always all the things you didn’t think about.
Kind of like it’s a new frontier.
Every time.
Read another article about Tartuffenthrope here.
Secrets & Lies by Nicole Hodges Persley is a Black adaptation of Molière’s Sganarelle, ou le Cocu imaginaire, to be produced by KC Melting Pot Theatre in June 2022.
Double Bill: The Precious Young Ladies (Act I) by Molière/ The Precious Young Men (Act II) by Alli Jordan
Date: 22 October to 23 October 2021
Time: TBD
Location: Pembroke Hill School
Pembroke Hill reserves the right to limit audiences or require virtual production.
Date: 22 October to 23 October 2021
Time: TBD
Location: Pembroke Hill School
Pembroke Hill reserves the right to limit audiences or require virtual production.
Celebrations of Molière's 400th birthday and the 200th anniversary of the state of Missouri will come together in the 2021-22 theatre season and in city-wide arts events: KC MOlière: 400 in 2022. In the meantime, we are pleased to share just a few of the many wonderful events offered by our partners on our events page. If you have an event to share, please send details to kcmoliere400@gmail.com.