"You Deserve To Be Tartuffified"
My first book (HOW TO EAT FRIED FURRIES) is being published by Eraserhead Press in less than a month. So I’m spending a little time saying “thank you” to all the forces that came together to push a painfully shy blue collar gutter snipe like myself to embrace her creativity.
Today’s “Thank You” is a little foggy — because my memory of this is a little foggy. But I think I’m thanking the right people. Today’s thank you goes out to the touring company of Theater West Virginia (who came to my high school — in Maryland — to put on a production of Moliere’s satire TARTUFFE).
Who would have thunk it? West Virginia exporting culture out to Maryland. Keep in mind, I lived in rural Maryland. Probably more rural than the area of West Virginia the cultural emissaries were traveling from.
So, I swear it happened. Or, at least, I’m pretty sure it happened.
My school didn’t have a lot of outlets for creative kids. By my junior year, the theater program died. And this was before the days of A-V clubs, the internet, and the like. Most of the time, I just skulked around the halls — silently suffering and counting the years until I could leave home.
Then one day we had an assembly. Not just any assembly. A performance of Tartuffe. A smart, biting satire against religious hypocrisy– being offered up right there in high school. Perhaps even more important, the actors agreed to hang out with some of the students afterward and talk about what life was like as a professional in the arts.
It was probably the least-sucky day in my entire high school career.
It helped me find out what I wanted to do with my life, more than any class did.
And for that, I just want to say, thank you.
