Lotfi Achour is a child of the medina in Tunis where, from the age of four, he studied in both public school and Koranic school. He explains in a long interview with Bernard Magnier in the journal of the Parisian TARMAC, “I went every day from an old and beautiful dilapidated palace, which was our primary school, to a very small mosque, very modest, with a nice little garden with a banana tree and a tame swallow that you could stroke, which was our Koranic school. It’s this latter place which really marked me. I’m from the Bab Souika district in Tunis, it’s a bit like the cultural centre of the medina, historically known for its very popular ‘singing cafés’ where you could see enormous Fellini-like dancers move with impressive virtuosity and sensuality. During the whole of Ramadan, it would carry on until the early morning. My love of theatre perhaps comes from that ...”

Lotfi started theatre at secondary school in Tunis around the age of eleven, but for a long time intended to have a political career, because public and collective life interested him a lot. He felt a very strong link with the society he lived in...