Tunisian Theatre In A New Century

In dealing with features and concerns of the Tunisian theatre at the beginning of the twenty first century, it may be asked whether the generation of the 1970s in the Tunisian theatre constitutes a stumbling block to the rise of new generations in the field.

The features of the Tunisian theatre were initially defined in the 1930s by Tunisian cultural societies, which appeared at that time at the hands of a generation, which believed in the interrelation between art and audience. The plays of the thirties were based on classical Arabic cultural legacies and heritage like Omar's Conversion (to Islam), which was produced by the Arab Acting Group, Lovesick that was put on by the Acting Star and Saladin the Victorious, which was performed by the Tunis Municipal Group in the early 1950s. Throughout the colonial period the theatre in Tunisia was a form of cultural resistance that emphasized and championed the Arab-Islamic identity.

That was generally the main concern of Tunisian intellectuals back then. Theatre to them was a means of mobilization and struggle against the French occupation. The members of the Tunisian national movement considered it as an important tool of resistance. But the situation changed in the era of the national state.

The State-Sponsored Theatre
When the State Ministry of Information and Culture was established in Tunisia, it set out to design organizational laws for theatre practices. The state defined the function of all dramatic art as a continuation of the same orientation it had decided for the theatre, i.e. to be in the service of "national issues". However, this aim was not fully realized as the official discourse sponsoring theatre artists was soon marred by confiscations of some of their works.

The achievements of the theatre in this period consisted in creating various local theatre troupes all over Tunisian provinces. But these "gains" were abandoned in the mid 1980s. In the early 1990s the troupes were cancelled and replaced in some cases by art centers. This was a shift from strictly defined theatre production to a combined form of production and distribution.

This brief note on the history of the Tunisian theatre offers a glimpse of the state of pre-modern productions. Afterwards, the early 1970s saw the coexistence between the public and the private sector that started with the appearance of the "Free Theatre" or the New Theatre as the Tunisian intellectual Mahmoud Al-Masaadi called it.

The 1970s: The Manifesto and the Shift
In 1973, eleven Tunisian intellectuals produced a manifesto stressing the necessity of severing the relationship between government-sponsored theatre and private theatre. They founded the first theatre ensemble to be known as the New Theatre, whose members included Al-Fadel Al-Ga'aybi, Al-Fadel Al-Gezeiri, Al-Habib Al-Masrouki (who committed suicide later in mysterious circumstances), Galila Bakkar and Mohamed Idris.The New Theatre produced a number of plays including Wedding, a bourgeois drama in the Brechtian vein, The Mother that was banned shortly after it was put on stage, Interrogation and Joke Laundry, which is considered the masterpiece of the ensemble. This latter play attempts to deconstruct the forces of hegemony and manipulation in the Tunisian state and society through the duet of a bourgeois young woman and her chauffeur. The new "game" is exposed and the "new bourgeoisie" is shown explicitly guilty. The chauffeur is fired as a result of the affair he has with his mistress. The play reveals that the idea of struggle, which the minor bourgeoisie pretends to communicate to the downtrodden, is a false illusion.

The New Theatre was also concerned with hot issues on the Arab arena. Arabs dealt with Beirut under siege and the Palestinian cause through the story of a flight attendant who gets pregnant by a Tunisian freedom fighter who disappears and takes refuge in a church in the Tunisian capital.

The poetic style of the ensemble has largely influenced the language of the Tunisian theatre in general. Other theatre groups, including public sector ones, tried to copy this style, and the tendency continues even now although the New Theatre was disbanded in 1988.

The Abortive Traditionalist Theatre
At the same time when the New Theatre was rising, playwright Ezz Al-Din Al-Madani tried to establish what he called the "traditionalist theatre". He wrote Blacks, Revolution of a Donkey Owner, Al-Hallaj and other plays, which were all revolutionary in a sense and were produced by the Municipal Theatre Group. These plays dealt with critical periods in the Arab history, and were used as a matrix on which to project a sense of defeat, disappointment and breakdown which marked the outlook of Tunisian intellectuals about the state and the society and probably the wider Arab world.Al-Madani's traditionalist works were, however, short-lived. His theatre was soon aborted. He stopped writing for the theatre in classical Arabic and made way for the local vernacular and the various imitations of the New Theatre experiments.

What Is After The New Theatre?
As the Tunisian Theatre enters the twenty first century, the main question is "What is to come after the New Theatre?" The generation of the 1970s has largely dominated the following generations. At present the theatre in Tunisia is an amalgam of individualist works like monologues, monodramas and in many cases one-man shows.

There are various theatre productions "companies" at present but they mainly tend to be interested in jokes and slapstick - a really worrying situation. Most of these nascent theatre companies have no clearly defined artistic vision, and are merely concerned with profit making without offering any substantial content.

The Tunisian theatre at present is almost lacking of any major productions. In 1999 there were only a handful of shows. Apart from Al-Fadel Al-Ga'aybi's Special Soiree and Hatim Dirbal's Genial Nights, the remaining productions were only recapitulations of earlier Tunisian theatre repertoire.

As the new century starts various questions remain unanswered with regard to artistic merit being engulfed by commercialized interest in the Tunisian theatre