Spectacle - La Terre

With La Terre (1887), Émile Zola does for the peasant what he had done for the worker with Germinal, a photograph of the period. It's the story of Father Fouan, who has become too old to farm his land and resigns himself to giving it to his three children. The inheritance raises questions that plague the family clan. What does the future hold for a farming model that seems outdated? How can we remain competitive with the American wheat that is flooding the French market?

In this adaptation, Anne Barbot focuses on the family's fall from grace, between hope and disillusion. She transposes a farmhouse to the stage, where the cast of actors lets us feel the intimacy and harshness of an era. She emphasizes the resignation of politics in the face of a rural environment hit by incipient free trade, and gives a place to the invisible, those everyday heroes. Having investigated the situation in the field, as Zola did in his day, the director shows just how much this text, written in the 19th century, still resonates today.

Anne Barbot is associate artist at Théâtre de la Manufacture CDN Nancy Lorraine from 2025 to 2028.

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