The role of theatre in the modernisation of Tunisia

Abstract

When referring to theatre in Tunisia, it is essential to distinguish between the theatre performed generally by and for the colonial settlers, which was predominantly in French or Italian, and the theatre in Arabic produced for Tunisians, predominantly in the Tunisian dialect. The challenge is how to take a historiographical approach to theatre in Tunisia when the historical understanding of Tunisian theatre is still piecemeal. We regard writing for an English- language publisher as a means to allow for discovery, through an initial foray into this reality. Can historiography boost historical perception? How can the study of the histories that are told and written capture the close ties between theatre and power, especially in light of the formation of a nation- state where colonial forms of theatre were appropriated, translated, and transformed into something that could be identified as Tunisian? What questions arise while tracing the new paradigms that emerge as Tunisian theatre grapples, on the one hand, with its colonial inheritance and, on the other hand, with the new cultural realities that emerged both since independence in 1956 and since the revolution of 2010– 11? Additionally, on a more personal level, there is the difference between the two authors of the chapter. Although both are scholars of theatre history, one comes from a post- colonial European country that is important in the history of migration southward towards Tunisia, and the other hails from Tunisia and has experienced both dictatorial regimes and political upheavals that continue to mark the reading of Tunisia’s past and the experience of its present. Both experienced the political revolution, baptised by the West as the “Arab Spring,” in the quest for a democratic order. [Excerpt]