Shakespeare Company Stages Molière's Tartuffe Downtown

The Shakespeare Company is stepping outside its usual lane this season. For the first time in the company's history, they're staging a play by someone other than Shakespeare—and it's a masterpiece of French satirical comedy: Molière's Tartuffe.

Artistic Director Richard Beaune, who happens to be French himself, sees this move as the beginning of something bigger. He wants to build a repertoire of international classics, drawing on translations and new adaptations from around the world. Starting with Molière makes cultural sense; it also signals ambition.

Tartuffe is one of theatre's sharpest social commentaries—a story about a manipulative fraud who insinuates himself into a wealthy household, exploiting faith and propriety for personal gain. It's 350 years old and still lands like a punch. The themes of deception, hypocrisy, and the masks people wear in polite society have never felt more current.

For Calgary's theatre community, this is a significant moment. It suggests the company isn't content to be a Shakespeare repertory house—it wants to be a genuine classics company, offering audiences work that stretches across languages, eras, and dramatic traditions. And for anyone who's watched the Shakespeare Company grow over the years, it's a natural evolution.

The production opens soon; this is the kind of risk that signals a company confident enough to grow beyond its founding identity.