Without doubt, Fadhel Jaïbi can be considered one of the true pioneers of modern theatre in Tunisia and the Arab world. A figurehead of modern theatre, he has taken theatre away from its traditional paths in order to explore new forms and new content.

Ever since The Marriage (1976), his first production with Nouveau Théâtre and a product of improvisation, this director, who is committed to collective and open forms of creation, has interrogated the everyday myths that move and shake Tunisian society. From the start, his theatre rejected all forms of alibi and utopian (or even atopian) figures, in order to concentrate on the real, in its current and present dynamics, and to question it. His work does not attempt to evoke a distant past (on the pretext of revising, revisiting or rewriting heritage), but focuses on the present as the only field of interrogation and investigation.

Jaïbi’s theatre puts present and current realities on trial, it shakes them, it accuses them. It constantly questions and interrogates power in its totali­tarian forms, in its tyrannical figures and its degraded or corrupt mechanisms. It takes many varying, changing forms: marriage and family (The Marriage in 1975, Al Wartha in 1976,...