Molière Ex Machina Stages AI-Imagined Unpublished Play at Château de Versailles

At the Royal Opera of the Château de Versailles, the Molière Ex Machina project staged the first performance of an AI-imagined, unpublished play on May 5–6, 2026.

“At the Château de Versailles, the very stage where Molière performed before Louis XIV, an experiment in artificial intelligence is having its world premiere”

CNN

The project is led by Sorbonne Université, the Théâtre Molière Sorbonne, and the Obvious trio, in partnership with Mistral AI, and it imagines what Molière might have written if he had lived longer.

CNN

CNN describes the experiment as one where a collective trained an AI on Molière’s complete works to generate an entirely new play in his style at the Château de Versailles.

Pierre-Marie Chauvin, Vice President for Science, Culture and Society, frames the work through the title proposed by the AI itself, “The Astrologer, or False Omens,” as a way to reflect on contemporary fascination with predictive systems.

Sorbonne Université says the writing protocol is not direct intervention, explaining that “If a word does not fit, the machine is prompted again to try to improve.”

The same account says the AI is fed by “the entire corpus of Molière,” and at times by specific passages from certain works as well as sources that inspired it, including Italian theatre and 17th-century Spanish comedies.

La Nazione

It also describes a long iterative process, noting that it has been “more than a year that the creative and scientific team has worked on writing the text.”

Once the text is stabilized, the actors of the TMS test the lines, their rhythm, and their musicality in constant dialogue with researchers, turning the process into “a true theatrical laboratory where AI becomes a partner in exploration in the service of a profoundly human work.”

In France, la Repubblica says the Comédie-Française treats Molière as an institution, noting that it was “Born on January 15, 1622” and that every year on that date its actors celebrate him.

“Listen to the audio PARIS — In France they never leave the theaters in the dark”

la Repubblica

The same article says Emma Dante has been entrusted with one of Molière’s most famous comedies, Les femmes savantes, and it describes the text as “a philosophical treatise on the role of women in society.”

La Nazione, meanwhile, places Molière in a different programming context, listing “il Don Giovanni nella versione di Moliere/Da Ponte/Mozart (3/8 marzo)” among the Metastasio season offerings.

In Catania, Sikelian reports that the Teatro Stabile di Catania’s season includes “The School for Wives by Molière,” directed by Luca Verdone, as part of its Verga program.