On a Tuesday afternoon in May, three actors from Brooklyn’s Molière in the Park took the stage in Wilder Hall and made a room full of college students and faculty laugh at jokes written in 17th-century France.
The staged reading—scenes from The Misanthrope, The Ludicrous Ladies, and The Imaginary Invalid—was part of a two-day visit by Lucie Tiberghien, the company’s founder and executive director, along with actors Kaliswa Brewster, Naomi Lorrain, and Daniel Pearce. The visit was organized by Professor of French Studies Faith Beasley.
“Over the course of an hour, the audience was on the edge of their seats, and would regularly break out in laughter from jokes that were written 400 years ago,” says McLaine Leik ’27. “That performance displayed the power of Molière’s writing, and how it can connect people across time and space, from 17th-century France to 21st-century New Hampshire.”
Brewster, Lorrain, and Pearce are all New York-based actors with extensive stage and screen credits, and have each worked closely with the company since its early productions.
“The actors were able to adapt themselves to the multiple characters they were playing, and their love for theater shone through their performance,” says Daphne Huang ’27. “There were numerous moments where the audience laughed out loud, and it directly connected to Molière’s own words about how his plays are not supposed to just be appreciated by text, but also with the physical performance.”
“It is absolutely thrilling to witness a whole new audience come into contact with Molière’s genius,” says Beasley, who has taught her Molière Past and Present seminar for over a decade. The performance was followed by a buffet dinner at her home, which allowed students and faculty to engage with Tiberghien and the actors in an informal setting.
The day before the staged reading, Tiberghien gave a public lecture—Molière Past and Present: Translating Early Modern Theatre for the 21st Century—and visited Beasley’s class on Molière, talking through the work of producing, directing, and translating his plays.
During her public lecture, Tiberghien told the audience that Molière’s 400 years of continued relevance is proof enough of his genius, so her job isn’t to improve his work, but to honor it. Where some translators inject their own perspective and taste, she tries to preserve the feeling of the original, giving English-speaking audiences something close to what French audiences have always experienced.
Tiberghien also spoke about Richard Wilbur’s celebrated English versions of Molière. Huang was struck by Tiberghien’s praise of Wilbur’s ability to hold onto the dancing rhythm of the original French, the fluidity of the language, and above all the humor.
"As for adaptation, I loved how she felt comfortable changing parts of Molière’s words in The Imaginary Invalid to better adapt to the current climate about science and medicine,” Huang says. “It reminded me that contemporary artists have the agency to change small aspects of the theme without compromising Molière’s language.”
Molière in the Park’s Kaliswa Brewster, Lucie Tiberghien, Daniel Pearce, and Naomi Lorrain with Professor of French Studies Faith Beasley (third from left).
Molière in the Park was founded in Brooklyn in 2018 with a mission to bring free, contemporary productions of Molière’s comedies to Prospect Park—and to reach audiences who might not otherwise walk into a theater. In addition to its public performances, the company has introduced thousands of Brooklyn schoolchildren to live theatre through its productions. Molière in the Park has presented many of Molière’s most iconic plays, including Le Misanthrope, Tartuffe, The School for Wives, and The Imaginary Invalid, which Tiberghien translated and directed, and which earned two 2026 Drama Desk Award nominations: Outstanding Adaptation for Tiberghien, and Outstanding Music in a Play for composer and cellist Johnathan Moore.
The nominations came after a difficult stretch. Just days before The Imaginary Invalid opened last year, the company was among hundreds of arts organizations nationwide to have their NEA grants rescinded. The show went on anyway. “It really does get darker before dawn,” the company wrote when the nominations were announced.
A student’s legacy
The visit was made possible by the Alexandra Hudson Simpson ’22 Academic Enrichment Fund, endowed by Alex Simpson and her mother, Melanie Simpson. Beasley described the origins of the fund in her introduction to the staged reading.
Alex was a student in Beasley’s class on Molière in the summer of 2020, when the class watched a livestream of Molière in the Park’s production of Tartuffe during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. That fall, Beasley hosted a small reunion so students could watch another livestream of the company, this time of The School for Wives. Alex went on to write her thesis on the theatricality of gastronomy, focused on 17th-century France. She and her mother endowed the fund to enable the department to bring professionals in the arts to campus.
“Alex believed in the power of the arts, especially theatre, to create a better world,” Beasley says. “She saw MIP as a theatre company that shared this vision.”
Alex lost her battle with cancer a few months after graduating in 2022. Beasley told the audience she was sure Alex was there in spirit.
The visit was also supported by the Leslie Center for the Humanities, the Office of the Associate Dean of the Arts and Humanities, and the Department of Theater.