'Tartuffe' and 'The Full Monty'

For some reason, I thought of my college friend Lynn the other day. Every time I think of her, I remember the theater appreciation class we took together. The professor was a prim, stuffy old maid. Most class periods we saw videos of whatever play we were studying. Prof sat in the front row to deal with any technical difficulties.

One day, we watched “Tartuffe”. Actually, we heard all of it, but only saw part of it.

At some point in the play, a naked man appeared on screen. Immediately, Prof leaped up with a sheet of paper to cover his nakedness. She peered over the top of the paper to see when he would go away. He was on stage for some time. She would become engrossed in the video and the paper would slip downward, exposing the naked man.

“Ooh, ooh,” she said. “Oh, that’s disgusting! Why doesn’t he put on some clothes!”

When she would realize that she was no longer covering the nakedness, she would jump and jerk the paper upwards.

We were nearly rolling in the aisles, except that we couldn’t laugh outwardly. We knew that laughing out loud would break the spell, so we choked on it. Tears were streaming down our faces from the effort of suppressing belly laughs. Thankfully, all the lights were off so she couldn’t see our faces.

When play finally ended, she took some time flipping on the lights. Perhaps she wanted to cover her reactions to seeing a man’s full monty. Fortunately for us, her delay gave us time to wipe away the tears and compose our expressions.

“Well,” Prof sniffed, “I’ve never seen such a disgraceful exhibition as that!”

Every student in the class went rigid with the effort of controlling laughter once again.

Once class was dismissed, we rushed away from the classroom and all dissolved into helpless laughter. Nearly everyone reported aching sides the next day, the result of holding in guffaws.

I remember nothing about that class except for the naked man in “Tartuffe”. So much for appreciating theater.

I’ll bet Prof never showed a film again without previewing it.