November 05, 2015
Mooney brings “Molière Mania” to SIU
CARBONDALE, Ill. – Special guest artist Timothy Mooney brings Molière mania to the McLeod Theater with his hit, one-man show “Molière than Thou.”
The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 19 in McLeod Theater (Communications Building). It is free and open to the public.
Molière, the stage name for Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, was the leading French comic actor and playwright of the 17th century. His sharply witty satires, including “Tartuffe” and “The Imaginary Invalid,” are still popular today.
Mooney channels the wit and zaniness of Monsieur Molière and many of his famous characters in an evening of comedy that lampoons virtue, vice and human folly. The premise: Molière, on tour, has been abandoned by his troupe of actors and must construct a performance, playing all the characters himself, to satisfy the audience.
Mooney, a veteran actor and 1981 alumnus of SIU, is the founder and former editor of “The Script Review” and was the artistic director of Chicago’s Stage Two Theatre, where he produced nearly 50 plays in five years. He has written 17 rhyming iambic pentameter versions of Molière’s plays, most published by Playscripts, Inc., a company whose plays are produced around the world.
Mooney tours high schools, colleges and festival each year, performing his one-man shows, including “Shakespeare’s Histories: Ten Epic Plays at a Breakneck Pace,” “Criteria, a One-Man Comic Sci-Fi Thriller,” and of course “Molière Than Thou.”
The SIU Student Fine Art Activity Fee contributed funding for the program.