Don Juan Intro

2009 : Pushkin : Mozart (Amadeus) write Don Giovanni (Stone Guest) -- act one (Mozart and Salieri)

Stone Guest (DJ) [Russian Take) in Russian

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NEW:

commedia & comedy pages [perfect character breakdown: lovers, old man, fool]

... what a perfect choice for VT production!

V-Theatre as "virtual" and as "variety"!

Web - as this "variety theatre"!

... themes

script.vtheatre.net/moliere

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Don Juan 2003 *

My eBooks:

2008 directing class

DJ XXI

Biomechanics Glossary:

I am not done with Dangerous Liaisons! Moliere script is stronger. The origins of libertins. Behavior as "personal politics" and Lotman on aristocratic code of behavior as social acting.

Commedia

Summary

Don Juan, by Moliere (Harvest Book) by Richard Wilbur (Translator) Don Juan, the "Seducer of Seville," originated as a hero-villain of Spanish folk legend, is a famous lover and scoundrel who has made more than a thousand sexual conquests. One of Molière's best-known plays, Don Juan was written while Tartuffe was still banned on the stages of Paris, and shared much with the outlawed play. Modern directors transform Don Juan in every new era, as each director finds something new to highlight in this timeless classic. Richard Wilbur's flawless translation will be the standard for generations to come, as have his translations of Molière's other plays. Witty, urbane, and poetic in its prose, Don Juan is, most importantly, as funny now as it was for audiences when it was first presented.

Questions

Don Juan and Other Plays (Oxford World's Classics) This selection of seven of Moliere's prose plays includes "Precious Provincials," "The Would-be Gentleman," "Don Juan," "The Reluctant Doctor," "Scapin the Schemer," "The Miser," and "George Dandin."

Notes

I have to remind myself that ALL my instructional pages are not for theatre majors, but for directors and actors.

The Theatre of Don Juan: A Collection of Plays and Views, 1630-1963 by Oscar Mandel; University of Nebraska Press, 1963 : [Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com]

MOLIÈRE Don John; or, The Libertine A Comedy (1665)
Translated by John: Ozell, revised and augmented by Oscar Mandel

ACT I Scene 1
Sganarelle, Gusman

SGANARELLE[with a Tobacco-Box in his Hand]: Let Aristotle and all the Philosophers in the World say what they will, nothing is like Tobacco; 'tis the Darling of all Men of Honour, and he that lives without Tobacco is not worthy of Life. It not only gladdens and purges Man's Brain, but it likewise puts him in the way to Virtue, and one learns with it to become an honest Man. Don't you see that as soon as ever one takes it, with what an obliging Manner one uses everybody, and how glad one is to give it on all sides, be one where he will? We don't so much as stay till 'tis ask'd for, but prevent People's wishes; so true it is that Tobacco inspires all those that take it with Sentiments of Generosity and Virtue. But enough of this; let's resume the Thread of our Discourse. So your Mistress, dear Gusman, Donna Elvira, surprised at oui Departure, set out after us; and her Heart, which my Master has pierced too deeply, cannot live, you say, without coming hither to him? Shall I give you my Opinion? I'm afraid that she'll be but ill rewarded for her Love; and that her Journey to this City will produce but little Fruit. You'd as good ha' stay'd at home.

Homecoming

2007 Spring:

Mamet

... Lul show?

In Amharic?

Movement only?

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DJ Intro

The Legend of Don Juan
"The speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love," Francis Bacon wrote more than three centuries ago in his essay upon that inexhaustibly bemusing subject. As though to show how right the Englishman was, and just possibly in the very year in which the words were written, a Spanish monk was bringing Don Juan into the world: the most hyperbolical of lovers, destined to place one thousand and three of his own countrywomen on an immortal list. [ The Theatre of Don Juan: A Collection of Plays and Views, 1630-1963 by Oscar Mandel; University of Nebraska Press, 1963 ]

... 2009 -- second look.
Director's Notes
Moliere, the Father of the French Theatre, wrote Don Juan in a hurry to save his carrier -- the show was closed by the church after 14 performances. And the play wasn't produced in France for almost two centuries. Why? Don Juan questions the God's existence. Women? Yes, only as a way to struggle with God. Sounds familiar? Yes, yes, the Original Sin story. Of course, the Moliere's comedy ends with Don Juan's fall into hell. It is a comedy?
If we see that DJ is the only true believer, who is too much ahead of his time (Reformation and After), he got what he was asking for -- God answered him and this is the happy end. Well, the strangest comedy of Moliere is full of the self-irony. Instead of crying over man's mortality, we laugh! Remember Dante's "Divine Comedy"? We, humans, are too rediculous to take ourselves completely seriously.
This is why I wanted to stage "Don Juan" in traditions of the Commedia -- big physical acting! Extreme and grotesque!
I was looking for a contract between the form and very serious meaning of the theme -- what is Man? What is Don Juan's or my own Hell? The answer is simple: there is a price to pay for unlimited freedom of mind... The solutide. This is our modern and postmodern understanding of human existence as a tragedy. Sounds familiar too?
Anatoly Antohin ( more @ shows.vtheatre.net/dj )
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Actors, there are two, maybe three-five great male roles!
Directors, it is a comedy with the tragic end. Great! Trust me and Moliere, Mozart (Don Giovanni), it's a trully good dramatic material. Some themes in Amadeus (Solierri's challenge to God).
Devil is the first angel gone mad. The pride of Lucifer = revolt of the noble man. "An Ecstasy of Arrogance"!
More Baroque! Style! Street, square, grotesque!
Farce, harlequinade, burlesque.
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new: images page!

HamletDreams - Dangerous Liaisons --> DJ: madness, love or lust, blashphemy and sins....
The End of the Golden Age: our Spaniard is challenging death and the Devil nor less than Heaven and God.

[ Love: The music (Gipsy Kings + opera? or church chant) is to throw me away from the period piece. ]

Summary

Moliere.... also wrote seven of his greatest plays, including the complex Dom Juan (1665; Don Juan, 1739)

Historical notes: Tirso de Molina "The Deciever of Seville" (17th century, after the struggle agaonst Moors). Turkish and Arabis traces (including slavery).

One of the myths -- at the end DJ becomes a monk.

[ Source: Dandies & Don Juans, Knopf, 1927 ]

NB

Concept opposite to Don Quixote and knight-monk-poet idea.

Shows to Direct:

The Misanthrope and Tartuffe Two classic plays translated by a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet into English verse. In The Misanthrope, society itself is indicted and the impurity of its critic’s motives is exposed. In Tartuffe, the bigoted and prudish Orgon falls completely under the power of the wily Tartuffe. Alhambra

The great adorer -- and satirist -- of women performed so well that many persons think of him to this day as a man who lived and created his legend out of his own deeds. In 1835, an imaginative or negligent historian, Louis Viardot, even advanced the claim that the story of Don Juan Tenorio could be be read in an old chronicle of Seville. This Tenorio, member of an illustrious family and companion of Don Pedro the Cruel ( 1350-1369), was supposed to have carried off the daughter of the Commander of the Order of Calatrava and to have murdered the latter, who was barring his way. For this and for similar crimes the powerful monks of the Convent of San Francisco in Seville lured him into the church, arrested him, tried him, and secretly executed him. They allowed the rumor to be spread that Don Juan had been cast into Hell by the memorial statue of the Commander. 1 Viardot's report was credited, or at least respected, for almost a century. But Spanish investigators, rummaging among the archives of Seville and other cities, could find no trace of the story, and today all scholars agree that Don Juan -- in English, plain Sir John -- and his adventures are fictions as pure as the fiction of Don Quixote. There was once an important family in Seville called Tenorio, but the only possible conclusion to be drawn from this lone fact is that Don Juan's creator borrowed the ancient name to give his tale the appearance of truth. [ Oscar Mandel; University of Nebraska Press, 1963 ]

Next: themes

Venice Carnival 2002 & DJ 2003

Where is my 2003 adaptation? With cuts...

lul-seasons ?