(Stuart Miller’s article appeared in The New York Times, 5/26; via Pam Green; Photo: Lucie Tiberghien directing the staged reading of “Tartuffe” for Molière in the Park, the company she founded to bring free outdoor theater to Brooklyn.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York Times.)
Molière in the Park garnered praise for Zoom productions of “Tartuffe” and other plays. Putting on an outdoor show in Brooklyn has been another matter.
Sitting on a bench in Prospect Park recently as flocks of maskless Brooklynites passed by, Lucie Tiberghien reflected on the long, strange journey toward the first full production of Molière in the Park, the company she conceived to bring free theater with a diverse cast and crew to her home borough.
This weekend, after months of delays that radically reshaped her plans, she is on her way to fulfilling that dream, with a staged and costumed reading of “Tartuffe.”
Raised in France and Switzerland, Tiberghien has lived in New York since 1995, directing plays regionally and Off Broadway. Walking through the park a few years ago, she wondered to herself, “Why isn’t there a company dedicated to putting on theater here?”
She created a nonprofit in 2018 to fill that role. Since Shakespeare already has his own park gig, at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, and since she is French, she chose Molière, whose works she has long admired. “I had been trying to be hired to direct Molière for years,” she said.
And since the plays mix comedy and drama, she added, “it’s great for an outdoor spring theater, because it can be subversive and biting but also festive and joyous.”
Garth Belcon, an executive producer of Molière in the Park, offered another reason: “His plays place their thumb ever so lovingly into the eyes of the establishment and glitterati of his day.”
