Jesus Loves the Pharisee. (Lessons from Tartuffe)
I am playing Madame Pernelle in Moliere's Tartuffe at The University of Alabama. Tonight was our third dress rehearsal (think big shiny amazing costumes in the style of 17th century Paris, France). We open the show on Tuesday.
I have never played a role like this one before. Well, not since I played the Queen of Hearts in high school. But high school was at least five years ago. And, moving on...
Tonight was a fantastic rehearsal. I have had to stretch more than ever before to understand this character. I have pulled and prodded and researched and struggled, and tonight, it felt as though I finally fully stepped into her skin. It was amazing.
But, earlier in this process, I wasn't sure that I even wanted to step into her skin. It pinched.
Madame Pernelle is so cruel, so domineering, so overbearing. She guilts people and doesn't listen to them and runs them over and "has her say". She has line upon uninterrupted line at the top of the show. And I spent a lot of time during this rehearsal process asking myself, "Why does she have to be so horrible?" I started to realize that sometimes, I just hated her. And it's hard to step into someone's skin when you hate them.
Our director, Seth, told me that she is very different from me, and I realized that, in his teacherly wisdom, he had given me this role to challenge and stretch and prepare me for a wider range of roles in the future. I was also flattered that he thought Madame P and I were different.
But you know what I noticed tonight? If I step fully into a character's skin, then they get to borrow my body and voice and mind and heart and live for awhile. If Madame Pernelle's just a character, then I can judge her and I can rip her to shreds because she's an "it", but if I allow her to really live through me, then she becomes human. And along with that, she gets the rights of a human.
Tonight, Madame Pernelle, this domineering, pharisaical woman, became for me an object of God's love, someone He created and then came to save and redeem. A woman loved despite all of her flaws, all of her sins, all of her rebellion.
In Tartuffe, Madame Pernelle bosses people in a way that is both exhilarating and isolating. Being in her skin, I experienced both tonight. She speaks in the language of a Christian, but her heart is far from God. And her sins are wrong and evil and caused His death.
But, if she is human, then God also sees her hurts.
He also sees the fact that she's a widow, and that she's a woman who's gotten older and lost her beauty in many ways, and so she dresses regally. Instead of thinking, "I have the Lord to hold onto," she thinks, "I have power to hold onto. I don't get to be beautiful anymore, but I have power, control, authority, force."
But the Lord would be whispering to Madame Pernelle, "I love you. You are beautiful to me. I am captivated by you, daughter." And in her loneliness at the loss of her husband, Christ would come to her as Emmanuel, God truly with us, and hold her at dark midnight when she feels most alone.
And I think that that would break the hardness of her.
At the end of the play, she does get to break. I love that at the end, she's silenced. She's humbled. Suddenly, the script has no lines to give her.
She is proven wrong, and I think that it's a grace to her. She suddenly gets to smile and laugh, and not in a snarky way. She finally can be part of her family instead of trying to be above it, isolated by her pride.
She reminds me of King Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible, who was driven insane by God and made to eat grass for his pride, but when he raised his eyes toward heaven, he was restored to his sanity and to his throne. He responded with beautiful words of praise:
"Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride he is able to humble." (Daniel 4:37)
Madame Pernelle's last line of the play is, "I breathe again, at last."
Maybe God does love the Pharisee, after all.
Beauthful! Thanks for the insights, Elizabeth.
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