Tunisia Way

The theater started to belong to cultural landscape of the country at the beginning of the XXème century, partly thanks

to the contact théatreavec the Masters of the Egyptian theater come at the time to Tunisia. This report quickly gave rise to a pleiad of theatrical figures which dissociated European theater, already present in the country, by a claiming conscience of the Tunisian and Arab identity.

 Names, such as Mohamed Bourguiba, Ibrahim El Akkoudi, Khélifa Stambouli, Mohamed Lahbib made school thanks to the accession of intelligentsia and the support of the nationalists. And it is with Mandelevium Abdelaziz El Agrebi, that the first professional troop: The Troop of the Town of Tunis was confirmed in 1954.

This troop benefitted from the first promotions of the Arab School of theater and it is within its framework that Aly Ben Ayed (prematurely deceased in 1972) carried out with brilliance the first “esthetic revolution” of the Tunisian scene. According to its example, the generation of independence could, with the five decade old wire, to work what one recognizes today like the Tunisian theater. Born from the school theater, this generation made its weapons with the university theater before refining its knowledge in prestigious institutes and schools of theater of Europe. The second “theatrical revolution”, gradually imposed a method of creation based on the actor and succeeds in proposing a new dramaturgy which gained the accession of the public. As for the theater based on the traditional text, he knew his period of splendor in the Seventies with authors such as Ezzeddine Madani which signed several successes. But the theater of the author/actor/director defended by the New Theater (first private theatrical company of the country), quickly eclipsed the theater of repertory. The public, in young majority, did not hesitate to prefer a theater of the present at a theater playing over the past. The spectacular success of Ghassalet ennouader (Rain of Fall) in 1980, confirmed this tendency.