Granouillet: THE ZALE

"The Zeal" is a family drama or, as the director himself calls it, a chase-comedy. Almost as if played to the rules of vaudeville, an ordinary family encounter turns into a tragicomical drama in which the petty-bourgeois roles of father, mother, brother, sister, daughter, son ... are interchanged. Each one of them gets involved in a forbidden adventure and finally discovers dark secrets of a superficially idyllic family. And while the emotional, psychological and mental traits of the characters are being exposed, petty prejudices are released and a new family frame is constructed, this time with a help of different perspectives.

This French-Croatian-Belgian coproduction, realized in an ambitions project including theater La Comédie de Saint-Etienne, Zagrebacko Kazalište Mladih and Théâtre de la Place from Liége enabled not only exchange of actors, but the exchange of cultures as well. The director Jean-Claude Berutti studied at a renowned school of the National Theatre in Strasbourg. He made his first director's step working alongside famous Jean-Pierre Vincent and Patrice Chereaua. From the very beginning his interest is equally divided between opera and drama theatre. He directed at TNS, Comédie Française, Belgian National Theatre, Royal Flemish Theatre in Brussels, as well as in famous opera houses La Monnaie (Brussels), in Lyon and Nancy… Since 1997 he has been the director of Théâtre du Peuple de Bussang, and since 2002, together with François Rancillacom, he has been at the head of the renowned theater La Comédie de Saint-Etienne. He has directed Goldoni, de Gard, Chekhov, Ostrovsky, Molière, Handke, Tabory, Srbljanovic, Beaumarchais, and Marivaux… He is the president of the European Theatre Convention (ETC) founded in 1988 which gathers 41 theatres from 25 European countries, with the aim to support and promote contemporary drama, as well as joint theatre projects in Europe.