The scenic works of Meriam Bousselmi, with their stylistic diversity, are as colourful and versatile as her character: the director, author, filmmaker and lawyer is an imaginative, technically-precise interpreter of her own works. She has the ability to create politically-charged imagery to traditional Tunisian music. And she does not shy away from presenting a semi-staged installation on the question of memory and forgetting in the time of war.

Bousselmi’s international breakthrough took place at the young age of 28, when her staging of her own text Mémoire en retraite at the Théâtre National Tunesien received the Al Qassimi Award for the best Arabic language theatre production of the year in 2011. This recognition was awarded by an independent jury under the chair of Lebanese actor and director Roger Assaf at the end of a competition for theatre pieces which formed part of the Arab Theatre Institute’s Festival in Amman in January 2012.

The prize was bestowed during the Sharjah Festival in the United Arab Emirates in March of the same year. Following this award, an absurd conflict took place within the company of the Théâtre National Tunesien with the result that Bousselmi quit her engagement with the largest theatre in...