A World Premiere
(English Language)
Presenting a never seen before "Tartuffe" seems unimaginable.
Yet, that's what you'll get a chance to see in Prospect Park, this May!

Creative Team
In partnership with LeFrak Center at Lakeside and Prospect Park Alliance
Director: Lucie Tiberghien
Translator: Maya Slater
Original Play Restitution: Georges Forestier
Producer: Garth Belcon
Set Designer: Alex Jourdan
Lighting Designer: Stoli Stolnack
Costumes: Jessica Irvin
Development Associate: Ningyi Zhang
Press Rep: David Gibbs/DARR Publicity
Social Media: Media a la Carte
Graphic Designer: Liane Fredel
How is this a World Premiere?
We are offering the English Language World Premiere of Molière's original "Tartuffe", written in 1664 and immediately banned by the King of France.
Lost to history, this original play was reconstructed by Georges Forestier, a renowed French Historian, through a process of historical genetics, and premiered at La Comédie Française in Paris in 2022.
It will be presented in English for the first time ever, on the Molière in the Park stage.
Synopsis
A bible thumping slug
Enters the home of a puritan bug
Mix in love, power,
And fleshly fantasies by the hour
And call it Molière’s original plug!
If ever a play,
Plumed back in the day,
Knew exactly with what we’d be dealing.
THIS tale by Molière,
Might be older fare,
But the story's even more ... revealing.
A statement from Lucie Tiberghien
I never thought I’d be able to say: Molière in the Park is presenting a
new play by Molière. Yet this is what we’re doing, at a time when the two factors that led to the banning and disappearance of the original script have re-emerged in the U.S. with furious energy: censorship, and willful denialism. Theater for all, as free entertainment, as a catalyst for empathy in our communities and as a conduit for political and social discourse is what we set out to offer when founding Molière in the Park. This English language world premiere, penned 359 years ago, gives us a distinct and immediate chance at an exciting and terrifying prospect because… how exactly have we evolved in those 359 years?”

This program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
We thank our major supporters: Bloomberg Philanthropies, Samira Wiley, Sybilla and Alex Balskanski Family Foundation.
Producers: Leslie Puth, Stephan Haimo and Veronica Bulgari
Associate Producers: Merry Kay and Steve Poe, McKenna Poe and Daniel Klingenstein, and Mary Vines
Tartuffe by Molière, translated by Maya Slater appears in The Misanthrope, Tartuffe and Other Plays (Oxford World's Classics) is used with permission of Oxford University Press