SEX, MONEY & HUNGER, a family chronicle by Emile Zola

Luk Perceval, the director of 3STRS and Once Upon a Long Day, returns to the Stary Theatre in Kraków with his adaptation of Les Rougon‑Macquart, a monumental cycle of novels by Émile Zola, one of the best-known French writers. Over the course of 20 novels, the author described the fates of the fictional Rougon‑Macquart family, whose members include businessmen, saleswomen, revolutionaries, sex workers, miners and doctors. Each member of the family faces the legacies passed down by previous generations: poverty, alcoholism, madness, ambition, artistic talent. Yet at the same time, they are also influenced by the reality in which they find themselves. Zola’s novels depict profound social and economic transformations of the 19th century, offering touching stories of greed, desire, the pursuit of happiness and a better life. In his production based on Zola’s famous saga, Luk Perceval revisits the questions asked by the writer: what drives human development? Where do we come from? How did we become the people we are today? Can humanity become ‘better’?