Introduction

Abstract

The Avignon Festival in 1995 saw the premiere of Ariane Mnouch-kine’s Théâtre du Soleil production of Molière’s Tartuffe, in which the eponymous villain featured as a fanatical Muslim cleric. An Islamist Tartuffe also featured in Serdar Bilis’s 2004 production of Tartuffe at the Arcola Theatre in London. Numerous productions of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have lifted Molière’s play out of its original Christian context and successfully recast it in a Muslim one. Is Islam the new Christianity of Western satire? Islam is undoubtedly fertile ground for modern Western satirists, although the fierce controversy provoked by the publication of 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed in the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, on September 30, 2005, that resulted in a series of violent protests around the world and even a number of deaths certainly gave pause for thought.¹ According to Mnouchkine, an Islamist interpretation of Molière’s Tartuffe character is the most apposite for a modern French audience, but in other cultural contexts there are other, better options available for the modern director wishing to underline and update the religious dimension of a play that was first performed in 1664.²