KC Molière: 400 in 2022

the vision

Join us as we prepare to showcase Kansas City’s French heritage with a city-wide celebration of Molière’s 400th birthday, January 15, 2022. The 2021-22 theatre season will launch a season of Molière plays, Molière-inspired new works, and French neoclassical and Baroque works embracing all of the arts: theatre, dance, music, film, puppetry, visual arts, and literary arts. Events are already underway during this build-up to the birthday season and the inauguration of the Chouteau Heritage Fountain.

Leaders of Kansas City’s major arts organizations and educational institutions in all of those areas have signed on to participate. The fall months leading up to the January 2022 kick-off will be devoted to educational programming and academic productions.

2022 also marks a significant anniversary in Kansas City’s historic linkage to France: the 200th anniversary of the first full year of operation of the Chouteau Trading Post on the banks of the Missouri River. Kansas City, Missouri (KC MO), was founded and first settled by French families (Chouteau, Prudhomme, Rivard, Fournais, and others). March 2019 brought the ribbon-cutting for a sculpture of François Chouteau with two Osage natives to be unveiled on a new fountain in 2022.
Besides reinvigorating Kansas City’s French connection for the next generation, the six-month KC MOlière celebration will offer a much-needed opening up to the classics as well as to the non-English-speaking world. Within the city and the Missouri Valley region, the project will nurture collaborations among arts and educational institutions; we are especially interested in outreach to elementary and secondary schools.

THE NEED

Kansas City has long been a vibrant home for the arts. With ten professional theatre companies as well as many semi-professional companies, annual per capita theatre attendance is one of the highest in the nation.
However, almost every one of these organizations is devoted to English-language works of the last quarter century, which means that the next generation is largely deprived of exposure to the classics other than Shakespeare. Despite the quantity of theatrical activity, there is almost never any foreign play in translation.

Kansas City’s geographical location in the middle of the USA, in what is known as “fly-over country,” means that the accomplishments of our artists tend to be overlooked. Critics from the American east and west coasts don’t come to cover our original works as they do up and down both coasts. An internationally-visible celebration of Molière that involves dozens of arts organizations will draw needed attention to our city. Conversely, Kansas City’s young people need the jolt of stimulation to appreciate and learn about the USA’s friendship with France, our oldest and most enduring ally.