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A cornerstone artistic organization in the city of Winnipeg is celebrating a milestone birthday in 2025.
Théâtre Cercle Molière will be marking its centennial year of artistic excellence by doing what it does best: sharing innovative theatre with audiences in St. Boniface and beyond.
“I think this celebration belongs to the whole territory,” said artistic director Geneviève Pelletier, providing a perspective on the monumental birthday in an interview on Morning Light. “Storytelling has been on this land for [millenniums]. In that sense, I mean, Théâtre Cercle Molière is sort of like the we’ll say the colonial way of looking at how art became an important piece in Winnipeg, and at the same time, and how it has evolved in serving its French community.”
In its early years, the company served as an important hub for the preservation of the French language and culture as it was being actively suppressed. Pelletier recalls a time when the language was unable to be taught in the schools and teaching the culture and traditions of the Francophone community became something of a resistance movement.
“The Théâtre Cercle Molière was one of the places where people could come together, live a purely French experience together and build community,” Pelletier says, noting that the company was able to share classic French repertory plays outside of Winnipeg in places like Ottawa’s Dominion Drama Festival.
“I think TCM... had a lot contribute basically to how the French community sees itself today and how historically, it was... just a very important place for French to evolve.”
As artistic director, Pelletier has overseen Théâtre Cercle Molière’s evolution since 2012. Earlier this season, it was announced that Pelletier would be stepping aside from her role, concluding a storied chapter in a relationship that began in 1991.
Pelletier sees her tenure at the company as a time of examination for what the role of theatre is in the French community today. “Like everywhere, there’s a real, I think, reflection to be had – a lot of questioning around where we are going as an art form,” she says. “Who is going to come to this art form in ten, twenty, thirty years, and how do we open that door for people to feel welcomed in this art form? What does it mean to be Francophone today? And what does it mean to be someone who’s welcoming not only to people who come from elsewhere, but even to people who are on this territory and who are maybe curious about what it means to be Francophone or what it means to do French art? I think that’s kind of been my big mandate.”
Théâtre Cercle Molière’s latest production, Frétillant et Agile (“Frisky and Agile”), is a continuation of the mandate Pelletier describes. The story was created by Wendat artist Jocelyn Sioui, and involves music and sand art to bring to life the story of Auhaïtsic, an unlikely hero that saves the community from extinction in defiance of colonialism.
Although the Wendat community lives primarily in Quebec, Pelletier observes that this story can bring new perspectives on reconciliation to people living on Treaty One Territory. “I really do believe that we have a tendency of putting everything in sort of an ‘Indigenous’ lens,” says Pelletier, who herself is Metis. “We kind of go ‘the Indigenous peoples’. We have huge discussions around this notion of pan-Indigeneity, and how do we separate that without kind of keeping that solidarity that we want to have within as far as the peoples are concerned.”
“The notion of resilience, the notion of rebuilding, the notion of reaching out and being able to share these stories, I think these are all things that we can take away from ‘Frétillant et Agile’.”
Théâtre Cercle Molière’s own resilience will be celebrated on April 25 with all the trappings of a birthday party on hand, complete with balloons and hot dog stand. The upcoming season will also be announced at the event, with even bigger celebrations planned for the fall.
The most important part of the event for Pelletier, though, is the representation of the generations that have sustained the theatre. “The idea of the hundredth is definitely to go, ‘OK, a hundred years and beyond a hundred years’... wanting to look at the, you know, the seven generations of that coming up. And so, how do we as folks today have that responsibility around legacy and leave the institutions for the next generation.”
Frétillant et Agile runs until April 19 at Théâtre Cercle Molière. Tickets and more information can be found at the company’s website.