Directed by Marc Vietor
Featuring Will Brill, Julie Halston, Reg Rogers, Robert Sella, and more to be announced.
Acidly blunt, misanthropic and judgmental, Alceste and Celimene have coincidental natures, but express them in fatally contrary ways. Is unsparing honesty always a virtue? Is love blind or does it willfully close its eyes? Molière’s masterpiece is a dark comedy depicting the inevitable combustion of two extraordinary lives in a society of liars.
This reading is presented in partnership with L’Alliance New York.
THE CAST
ABOUT THE PLAY
Coming Soon
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was born in Paris in 1622. Under the pseudonym Molière, he and Madeleine Béjart created a theatre troupe in 1643 called "The Illustrious Theatre." Their first shows were failures, and Molière was thrown into debtor’s prison. Upon his release he went on the road as the troupe's director, principal actor, and occasional playwright. In 1658 the troupe successfully mounted its first performance in front of King Louis XIV, and in 1659 The Affected Young Women launched Molière's career as a playwright. Molière and his players became the King's troupe in 1665, but some of the more religiously or socially virulent plays were not well received. Tartuffe (1664) and Dom Juan (1665) were both forbidden, and The Misanthrope (1666) enjoyed only mild success. That same year Molière wrote The Doctor In Spite of Himself, his most elaborate attempt to date at criticizing the medicine of his time, albeit in a farcical setting. The play was a big success, and from then on Molière focused on comedies up until his very last play, The Imaginary Invalid (1673), in which he played the lead role and derided, one last time, his contemporaries’ blind faith in what was then (and arguably still is) a very inexact science. During the fourth performance of the play Molière started coughing blood onstage; he finished the performance and died a few hours later. In 1680, by order of the King, his troupe was merged with two rival troupes to form the Comédie Française.
L’Alliance New York is an independent, not-for-profit organization committed to providing its audience and students with engaging French language classes and audacious multi-disciplinary programming that celebrates the diversity of francophone cultures and creativity around the world. A welcoming and inclusive community for all ages and all backgrounds, L’Alliance New York is a place where people can meet, learn, and explore the richness of our heritages and share discoveries. L’Alliance New York strives to amplify voices and build bridges from the entire francophone world to New York and beyond.