Download Tunisia`s Theatre Laboratory Grantee: Moez Mrabet Project: Tunisia

Tunisia’s Theatre Laboratory
Grantee: Moez Mrabet
Project: Tunisia‟s Theatre Laboratory workshop and performance series
Story collected by Zena Takieddine October 27th 2012
I still remember the first play I attended when I was a child. I was fascinated! The
intensity of my emotional experience at that moment left me amazed. How could it
be that an acting performance on a stage could have such an impact on me?
Seeking to master the mystery behind the impact of theatre on our thoughts, body
and feelings became a challenge for me and I enrolled at the Higher Institute of
Dramatic Art in Tunis. My first professional role as an actor was for the play “Les Amoureux du Café Desert” by
Fadhel Jaïbi when I was still a first-year student. This was a huge opportunity to start discovering the secrets of
the art.
The international tour of this play started in Beirut and Damascus in 1995 where we made about 15
performances in the two cities and I experienced another huge reality of the theatrical arts - it was my first
meeting with such an immense Arab public! Witnessing their responsiveness to the play, I felt first-hand the
power of theatre and, at the same time, its limits. Beirut was just coming out from the civil war and the
obsessional question I kept facing was: how could a play talking about themes specific to our Tunisian society
interest a public bogged down by a whole other reality?!
Some answers to this question came from the theater of Eugene Ionesco and I refer to “La Cantatrice Chauve”
(The Bald Opera Singer) – a modern classic I selected as my final year thesis. I adapted the play to the Tunisian
context while seeking to preserve the same sense of irony and black humor which gave the play the strength of
its message. It has to do with language, clever wording, movement, and also being able to hold silence – all
these are essential to making theater.
My later research during my Master‟s degree at the University of Nanterre-Paris and the Doctoral thesis at the
University of La Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris III were very helpful in leading me to understand some more secrets
of the theatrical art and especially the actor‟s techniques. I continued the practice of acting with my
performance in “Khamsoun” by Fadhel Jaïbi. It is always a precious occasion to be confronted to the stakes and
the limits of the actor‟s art. I am passionate about grounding theory into practice. Years after my earliest
experience as a wonderstruck child and long after I had chosen the thespian‟s path for my life‟s career, this
sense of awakened emotion continues to be at the core of my studying, teaching and performing theatre.
The most recent play I‟ve been performing is called “Yahia Yaiich”(Amnesia), written by Jalila Baccar and
directed by Fadhel Jaïbi. It was presented for the first time in Tunis in April 2010, a few months before the
revolution. It talks about the fall of an important man of power who is then put on trial by the very regime that
promoted him. We lived an incredible moment with this play, when almost one month after the escape of Ben
Ali and while the country was still rumbling, we were performing at Le Mondial Theatre in the heart of Tunis and
a confrontation broke out, just outside the theatre walls, between demonstrators and the police. Midperformance, we were hearing gun shots and tear-gas was seeping into the hall! The scenario we were
performing on the stage was ridiculously similar to what was happening right at that moment out on the street!
What incredulity and confusion! There will never be a more memorable moment for me. Theater suddenly made
perfect sense, not only because it can capture reality, but also because it can control it, analyze it, and
transcend it, opening it up very wide, towards unexpected prospects. I finally understood theatre as the
opportunity for making the impossible possible.
And now, almost two years “after” the revolution, we have only just begun to understand the crossroads we are
at as a nation and a region. My sense of awakened presence remains the backbone of the theatrical act, but the
current sociopolitical developments adds a dimension of urgency to the role of art and artists in society. Theater
must be able to change the world around it. I know this may be a utopic ideal for many people but it is a very
necessary challenge today.
For me, The Tunisian Theatre Laboratory is the best frame through which to explore and to develop innovative
approaches to art and theatre in society. I started doing this theatrical „field‟ work in 2008 when I founded the
first Arab Laboratory for Dance-Theater. I had applied for funding from AFAC back then and was able to include
twelve young performers from Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Morocco in the project where they worked
together for about one month and explored in depth the techniques shared between dance and theater.
Now, in the aftermath of the regimes‟ fall and the ongoing political deadlock in Tunisia, I feel a huge need to do
something that could move people towards self-empowerment while calling on citizen maturity and tolerance. I
applied again for funding from AFAC Express in August 2012 to launch a new edition of the Theatre Laboratory
for Tunis aiming to target the non-urban areas of the country. We wanted to introduce them to the power of
theatre as a form of self-expression and creativity, relational exploration and change. AFAC‟s support has been
essential at a time when the influence of the counterrevolution is increasing and the government suppression of
the arts and cultural practitioners has been terribly disappointing. I refuse to give up on the role of intellectuals
and cultural practitioners in promoting rational viewpoints and responsible citizenship in a way that could bridge
the growing division in the country.
The Tunisian Theatre Laboratory is based in Tunis but includes a series of „itinerant workshops‟ organized to
take place in different parts of the country (north-west in Beni M‟tir, center in the region of Kasserine, south east
in Bani Kheddash) in order to facilitate interaction with the people within their day-to-day environment. People,
particularly the youth, will be invited to engage in performances and practical exercises in the manner of the
„Theatre of the Oppressed‟ school and techniques. Some other workshops will target children specifically,
allowing them to play act and explore different aspects of their personality.
The Laboratory is only one part of an ambitious program called the “Theatrical Circle of Tunis” founded recently
as a collective to promote creative projects in experimentation, production, events, capacity building and
research about theater practice. My aim is to create a platform for a post-revolutionary language within the field
of acting and performing arts as a necessary part in digesting all that has happened. Movement, imagination,
rhythm and emotion will all be explored as techniques and as a new esthetic, one that could properly carry the
meanings and reflect on the newly upturned structures of the “here and now”. Acting sessions and debates will
be held in each region in order to create a space for dialogue and encourage participants to experience firsthand the transformative power of theater.