Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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subtitled a ‘history of modern times’. In this

work, the author studies what he calls the his-

tory of the relation of the body to the soul by

way of institutions designed to impose pain,

suffering, retribution and amendment. The his-

tory of the prison, like that of alterity, stands

at the basis of political and military institu-

tions. Noteworthy, however, is that Foucault

offers a history of the articulation of space in

the prison, military barracks, hospital, asylum

and secondary school. He shows that these

architectures tell much through their ‘form of

content’ as much as through what they else-

where try to impose or convey in their lan-

guage. This book was part of a political com-

mitment on Foucault’s part to institutional re-

form and, to a more radical degree, liberation

in general. His work did not ever separate its

inaugural drive—its eros and its politics—from

its conclusions. Surveiller et punir in fact made

manifest an ethics that had been less immedi-

ately visible in the earlier writings.

Foucault’s last works take up many of the

same themes encountered in the studies of the

years 1962–76. In the four-volume collection

of Sayings and Writings (Dits et écrits) pub-

lished in 1994, the reader encounters Foucault

in his most resonant voice. In so far as he had

defined his work not only as writing but also

as an ongoing political and social practice, the

interview, the short news item, the occasional

article, the book review and other ephemera

become crucial elements in his labours. Dits et

écrits transforms what readers have felt

Foucault’s work to have been by showing us

the conditions—the spaces and places, the

resistances and the stakes—in which his work,

be it on sexuality, incarceration, the invention

of the self, or the author as a mode of classifi-

cation, was elaborated. Few historians of the

same stripe have ever wedded such inclusive

sense of labour and praxis to their lives.

Foucault stands as one of the greatest expo-

nents and barometers of radical shifts in ap-

proaches to understanding and rethinking the

history of Western culture. This work goes

much further than the three volumes of The

History of Sexuality (Histoire de la sexualité),

which were published between 1976 and 1984

and which, conceivably by virtue of Foucault’s

own homosexuality, are his best-known books.

TOM CONLEY

See also: anthropology and ethnography; Aron,

Jean-Paul; poststructuralism; psychoanalysis

Further reading

Dreyfus, H. and Rabinow, P. (1982) Michel

Foucault, Brighton: Harvester Press (con-

tains an interview with Foucault and is a

lucid treatment of the shift from archaeol-

ogy to genealogy in his work).

Eribon, D. (1989) Michel Foucault 1926–1984,

revised edition 1991, Paris: Flammarion (a

very thoroughly researched biography).

Macey, D. (1993) The Lives of Michel Foucault,

London: Hutchinson (a comprehensive over-

view of Foucault’s life and work).

Fourastié, Jean

b. 1907, St-Benin-d’Azy, Nièvre;

d. 1990

Economist

Fourastié’s socioeconomic analysis of the

modernization of France after 1945 revealed

the scale of change that occurred during the

Fourth Republic and early years of the Fifth.

The title of his 1976 book, Les Trente

glorieuses, became shorthand for the years

that had transformed France from an archaic,

rural, agricultural society into a modern, tech-

nological, industrial nation. In 1945 Fourastié

had joined the new Commissariat Général au

Plan, facilitating the modernization he later

described as an ‘invisible revolution’, and

much of his academic work looked at the so-

ciological implications of economic growth,

examining inequalities, for instance, in Le

Jardin du voisin (The Neighbour’s Garden)

published in 1980. Fourastié devoted consid-

erable time to teaching, notably at the

Fourastié, Jean

219

Conservatoire national des Arts et Métiers and

at Sciences Po (the Paris political science insti-

tute), and wrote for Le Figaro. In 1968, he

was elected to the Academic des Sciences

Morales et Politiques.

HUGH DAUNCEY

Further reading

Bolen, F. (1978) Histoire authentique

(anecdotique, folklorique et critique) du

cinema belge, Bruxelles: Éditions Memo &

Codec (historical overview).

Davay, P. (1967) ‘Belgium’, in A.Lovell (ed.)

Art of the Cinema in Ten European Coun-

tries, Strasbourg: Council for Cultural Co-

operation.

Jungblutt, G., Leboutte, P. and Païni, D.

(1990) Une encyclopédie des cinémas de

Belgique, Paris: Éditions Yellow Now

(comprehensive work of reference ).

francophone cinema: North

Africa

National cinemas in the countries of the

Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia) were

only able to develop after independence from

French colonial rule (Tunisia and Morocco in

1956, Algeria in 1962), and their relationship

with France and the French cinema industry

continues to be problematic. Irrespective of

differences in political systems and conditions

of production, which range from state control

in Algeria to private funding in Morocco, with

Tunisia occupying an intermediary position,

opportunities for film-making in North Africa

are limited. North African films are in compe-

tition for audiences with Egyptian cinema on

the one hand and Hollywood on the other. As

a result, many North African film-makers have

turned to France (and Europe) for training,

funding, technical support and aid for distri-

bution and exhibition. Ironically, therefore,

given that metropolitan French audiences gen-

erally show little interest in Arabic culture, as

many as one in two North African film-mak-

ers live and work in ‘exile’ in France or Bel-

gium (particularly since the increase in funda-

mentalist terrorism in Algeria), and a large

proportion of francophone North African films

are (co-)produced in France and address a

European art-house and festival audience

rather than an indigenous popular audience

in the Maghreb.

The first Carthage Pan-African Film Festi-

val was held in 1966, and the first features by

North African film-makers were heroic narra-

tives of revolt informed by the national libera-

tion struggle against French colonialism and

foreign exploitation, the volume of which even-

tually gave rise to the term ‘couscous Western’.

A major figure to emerge from this period was

Algerian film-maker Mohamed Lakhdar-

Hamina, who won the best first film award at

Cannes with Le Vent des Aurès (1967) and the

1975 Palme d’Or for Chronique des années de

braise (1974), a moving drama about the war

of independence. Like other films of the 1970s,

Abdellatif Ben Ammar’s Sejnane began to ad-

dress more contemporary social issues: the

power of the state and the new ruling classes;

the condition of the peasants; urban misery; and

the condition of women (a topic also addressed

in films like Assia Djebar’s 1978 Nouba).

Merzak Allouache’s ground-breaking Omar

Gatlato (1976) replaced the conventional hero

with the figure of an ordinary Algerian youth,

and the success of its down-to-earth realism al-

lowed Algerian cinema to develop in less con-

formist ways.

A key theme of films of the 1970s was emi-

gration and the problems faced by immigrant

workers in France, represented in what critics

have referred to as a ‘miserabilist’ style. Ali

Ghalem’s two films, Mektoub? (1969) and L’

Autre France (1976), portray a young Algerian

desperately seeking work and the exploitation

francophone cinema: North Africa

223

of Algerian workers. Other examples include

Nacer Ktari’s Les Ambassadeurs (1977), an

exploration of the effects of French racism on

the community of North Africans living in the

Goutte d’Or district of Paris, Ali Akika and

Anne-Marie Autissier’s Voyage en capital

(1977), a comparison between the lives of a

(male) working-class immigrant and a (female)

middle-class student born in France, and Ahmed

Rachedi’s Ali au pays des mirages (1979), a

study of the aspirations and nightmares of an

immigrant crane-operator. Since the advent of

beur cinema in the 1980s, there have been few

films by North Africans about immigration in

France apart from Okacha Touita’s intense re-

alist dramas, including Les Sacrifiés, (1982), a

dramatization of the fate of a young immigrant

driven mad by the struggle between the FLN

and the MNA which tore apart the Algerian

community in Paris during the Algerian war.

Allouache captures the tone of beur cinema in

Un amour a Paris (1988), centring on the

doomed love affair between a Jewish Algerian

girl and a beur who fancies himself as the first

beur cosmonaut, and returns to analysing con-

temporary beur and banlieue (suburb) culture

in Salut cousin! (1996).

The film-maker of the 1980s who most suc-

cessfully uses humour to problematize and cri-

tique Algerian mores and cultural identity is

Mahmoud Zemmouri, now resident in France.

His first black comedy, Prends dix mille balles

et casse-toi (1980), explores the cultural con-

flicts produced when an immigrant family ac-

cepts the French government’s offer of fund-

ing to return ‘home’ and discovers that their

sons cannot adapt to Algerian village life. Les

Folles Années du twist (1983) refuses the he-

roic narrative of the national liberation strug-

gle, focusing instead on the pragmatic survival

tactics of two lovable rogues, while De Holly-

wood a Tamanrasset (1990) dramatizes the

intrigues of an Algerian community who

model their behaviour on their favourite

American film and TV stars.

However, in the 1980s North African film-

makers generally turned away from explicitly

political topics, disillusioned by the intransi-

gence of the nationalist movements and influ-

enced by both economic factors and Western

ideological values. Some sought commercial

success by using international stars and set-

tings, like Moroccan film-maker Souhel Ben

Barka’s Blood Honeymoon (1979), starring

Irène Pappas and Laurent Terzieff, and Amok

(1984), a film about apartheid starring

Miriam Makeba. Others sought international

recognition through a personal cinema linked

to the quest for identity and/or through self-

consciously auteurist topics and techniques.

Nouri Bouzid’s L’Homme de cendres (1987)

and Lakdhar-Hamina’s La Dernière Image

(1986) are specifically rooted in their direc-

tor’s childhood experiences, while Mahmoud

Ben Mahmoud’s Traversées (1982) and Nacer

Khemir’s Les Baliseurs du désert (1986) evoke

a universal sense of alienation and mystery.

In the 1990s, a number of film-makers in-

troduced debates about Islam, and about sexu-

ality and the body, into North African cinema.

Allouache’s Bab El Oued City (1993) and

Malik Lakhdar-Hamina’s Automne—octobre

a Alger (1991) offer critiques of the current

crisis in Algeria, while in Tunisia Nouri

Bouzid’s Bezness (1992) addresses the perni-

cious effects of sex tourism, and Moufida

Tlatli’s Les Silences du palais (1994) and Ferid

Boughedir’s 1990 Boy of the Terraces

(Halfaouine)—both scripted by Bouzid—ex-

plore various interdicts on the body. Halfouine,

which recounts the coming of age of a 12-year-

old boy amid very intimate domestic scenes,

has been the biggest box office hit in Tunisia

since the invention of motion pictures.

CARRIE TARR

See also: francophone performing arts (North

Africa); francophone writing (fiction, poetry);

North Africa; suburbs

Further reading

Malkmus, L. and Armes, R. (1991) Arab and

African Filmmaking, London: Zed Books.

——(1981) ‘Cinémas du Maghreb’,

CinémAction 14.

francophone cinema: North Africa

224

——(1982) ‘Cinémas de l’émigration 3’,

CinémAction 24.

——(1987) ‘Les Cinémas arabes’,

CinémAction et Grand Maghreb, Paris:

Institut du Monde Arabe.

francophone cinema:

Switzerland

This small industry is largely known outside

Switzerland by the names of two directors.

Claude Goretta’s 1976 adaptation of Pascal

Lainé’s popular novel The Lacemaker (La

Dentellière) helped to make a major star of

Isabelle Huppert, and his biopic of Rousseau,

Les Chemins de l’exil (1977), paid oblique trib-

ute to the greatest of Swiss-born actors by cast-

ing Michel Simon’s son François in the main

role. Alain Tanner has specialized in dulcet

post-May 1968 satires such as La Salamandre

of 1971, starring Bulle Ogier, and 1973’s Le

Retour d’Afrique, which parodies the enthusi-

astic Third Worldism characteristic of its time.

KEITH READER

See also: cinema; francophone performing

arts: Switzerland; francophone writing (fic-

tion, poetry): Switzerland

francophone performing arts:

Belgium

The first major literary figures of Belgian ori-

gin were closely related to the theatre

(Maeterlinck was awarded the Nobel prize for

literature in 1911 and his Pelléas et Mélisande

was immortalized by Claude Debussy). Yet,

despite its famous origin, twentieth-century

Belgian theatre of French expression has not

emerged as a major genre. Belgium has pro-

duced major playwrights but no identifiable

school of drama. The relative non-identity of

a Belgian drama of French expression can be

accounted for in a number of diverse ways.

Major figures avoid categories and cannot eas-

ily be inscribed in the context of international

movements. Enjoying a complex relationship

with their country of origin, its languages and

its tumultuous history (including the Question

Royale and the ‘linguistic wars’ which split

the nation in two), Belgian theatre remains in-

dividualistic and is often centred around the

problems of language, memory and history.

Avant-garde theatre has not thrived in Bel-

gium, and Belgian drama of French expres-

sion as a whole has had to compete with two

popular genres: plays written in dialect reflect-

ing local interests, and popular productions

of French (Georges Feydeau’s) vaudevilles or

Belgian comedies such as Le Manage de Melle

Beulemans (Miss Beulemans’ Wedding), per-

formed for the first time in 1910. Not surpris-

ingly, playwrights had to look elsewhere for

an audience. After World War II, despite the

state funding of Belgian theatres, many play-

wrights of Belgian origin looked to Paris for

an audience: Parisian blockbusters of Belgian

manufacture include Suzanne Lilar’s Le

Burlador, Jean Mogin’s 1950 play A chacun

selon sa faim (According to One’s Hunger),

and Michel de Ghelderode’s La Ballade du

grand macabre (The Macabre Ballad) of 1953.

The 1960s saw productions from two ma-

jor playwrights: Paul Willems and Jean Sigrid.

In Il pleut dans ma maison (It Is Raining in

My House), first performed in 1962, Willems

reveals a lyrical theatre where the barriers be-

tween life and death, between reality and

dream, are shown to be porous. His 1967 pro-

duction, La Ville à voile (The Sailing City), is

also obsessed with the past, but here a much

less optimistic view is expressed: language fails

to conjure up a past and a history, and the

main character’s dream ‘sailing city’ (i.e. Ant-

werp) will never emerge from its ashes. Sigrid’s

plays, 1959’s Les Cavaliers (The Horseriders),

Mort d’une souris (Death of a Mouse) in 1968,

and L’Espadon (The Swordfish) from 1976,

focus on a search for identity, and his 1977

production L’Auto-Stoppeur (The Hitchhiker)

experiments with a dysfunctional chronology.

On the international scene, the most fa-

mous and original Belgian playwright is René

Kalisky. The author of plays first performed

francophone cinema: Switzerland

225

in the 1970s and 1980s, he translated into an

experimental form traumatic events of the

twentieth century (Stalinism, Nazism, Fas-

cism). His most acclaimed productions include

Jim le téméraire (Jim the Reckless), Le Pique-

Nique de Claretta (Claretta’s Picnic), Dave au

bord de mer (Dave at the Seaside), La Passion

selon Pier Paolo Pasolini (Passion According

to Pier Paolo Pasolini) and Falsch. Kalisky’s

theatrical aim is to destabilize conventional

ways of representing and reading a dramatic

plot, as well as to undermine traditional no-

tions of identity by multiplying the possibili-

ties of the text (which he calls le surtexte, ‘the

supertext’) and the performance (which be-

comes le surjeu, superacting; see his Du

surtexte au surjeu).

JEAN MAINIL

Further reading

Frickx, R. and Trousson, R. (eds) (1989)

Lettres françaises de Belgique, vol. 3 Le

Théâtre, Louvain-la-Neuve (a comprehen-

sive list of plays by Belgian authors, includ-

ing summaries, history of performances

and bibliographies).

Quaghebeur, M. (1990) Lettres belges entre

absence et magie, Bruxelles: Éditions Labor

(a comprehensive analysis of drama, in-

cluding chapters on Willems, Kalisky, Baal,

Sigrid and Louvet).

francophone performing arts:

Indian Ocean

The islands of the Indian Ocean—Madagascar,

Mauritius, Reunion and the Seychelles—are

home to populations of very varied ethnic ori-

gins, and their differing cultural traditions are

reflected in the diversity and richness of the per-

forming arts in the area. Common to all the

islands is a tradition of storytelling, with recita-

tion of folk-tales transmitted orally and, more

recently, collected and transcribed in local lan-

guages and in French. These, along with rid-

dles and proverbial forms such as the sirindanes

of Mauritius, often form the basis of public cel-

ebrations of folklore in all the islands.

Popular music and dance traditions are

more differentiated: Mauritius and Reunion

share the sega, a Creole song form accompa-

nied by a rolling rhythm—usually in 6/8

tempo—provided by percussion instruments

and associated with a sensual form of danc-

ing. This was repressed as subversive and li-

centious in the years of slavery, but it is now

the dominant local folk music of both islands,

and is often used for tourist promotional pur-

poses. Since the mid-1970s in Reunion, there

has been a revival of a related form, the

maloya, closer to its African and Malagasy

origins, which in its pure form uses a chant-

response pattern and purely percussion ac-

companiment. A contemporary, very success-

ful example is the troupe of Gramoune Lélé, a

sprightly 65-year-old former sugar refinery

worker who has toured the ‘world music’ fes-

tivals of France and Europe. The style has

been taken up by Creole poets such as Danyel

Waro, as a vehicle for social and political pro-

test, and further refined by local groups such

as Ziskakan, militantly autonomist in inspira-

tion, who have added sophisticated electro-

acoustic instrumentation and subtle Creole

lyrics by literary figures such as Axel Gauvin

and Carpanin Marimoutou. A younger gen-

eration, exemplified by the group Baster, has

incorporated Western influences such as reg-

gae to produce a pop music with a distinctive

rhythmic style.

Madagascar has followed a similar pattern

in developing the resources of its folk music

to produce a popular style internationally ac-

ceptable in ‘world music’ circles. Rossy and

his group have had an international recording

career since the mid-1980s sponsored by the

British singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel; and,

more recently, Justin Vali, specialist of the dis-

tinctively Malagasy bamboo harp, has toured

in Europe, as have the group Salala, inheritors

francophone performing arts: Indian Ocean

226

of a Protestant tradition of a cappella close

harmony singing.

The development of dance in the islands is

similarly diverse. Apart from the troupes of sega

dancers from Mauritius and Reunion, both is-

lands have well-established schools of Indian

dance, and Reunion also has some locally sub-

sidized amateur companies of modern dance

and ballet. Madagascar has had its own national

folk troupe, Imadefolk, directed from 1975

onwards by Odeamson as a touring theatre

group and continued by his daughters as the

Landyrolafotsy troupe. Popular drama in Mala-

gasy languages, often sung, has always attracted

a wide audience, as in the hira gasy form. In

recent years, the novelist Michèle Rakotoson

has succeeded in staging as-yet-unpublished

French-language plays in Antananarivo, such

as Sambancy, which was a prizewinner in the

Radio France Internationale play competition

in 1980; and a new generation of women play-

wrights is returning to French after the period

of ‘Malgachization’, such as Charlotte

Rafenomanjato, Suzanne Ravoaja and Josette

Rakotondradany.

Mauritius and Reunion have had thriving

theatres at least since the early years of the

nineteenth century, and the theatre in the

Mauritian capital Port-Louis has recently been

restored with the help of grants from

francophone sources. Popular drama has none

the less relied principally on Creole in recent

times, the language accessible to the broadest

spectrum of its audience. The most successful

Mauritian dramatist, Dev Virahsawmy, pub-

lished a series of plays in the 1980s, some of

them in trilingual versions, using Mauritian

Creole, Reunionnais Creole and French. In

Reunion, the Théâtre Vollard, under the di-

rection of Emmanuel Genvrin, has been the

most prominent theatre group, with a series

of original historical dramas combining Cre-

ole and French, such as Étuves (Steamrooms)

in 1988, recreating the Revolutionary period

in Reunion, and Creole adaptations of Jarry’s

King Ubu (Ubu roi) in 1979 and Ubu colonial

(1994). The troupe has regularly visited the

Théâtre International de Langue Française in

Paris and the Festival des Francophonies in

Limoges. Other Réunionnais theatre groups,

such as the Théâtre Talipot of St-Pierre, di-

rected by Philippe Pelen, are attempting a dra-

matic synthesis of the diverse cultural tradi-

tions of the Indian Ocean area in ambitious

multimedia productions such as Mâ in 1995.

Cinema, not surprisingly the Cinderella of

the performing arts in such an isolated part of

the francophone world, has maintained a pres-

ence in Reunion: a thriving animation school

at the Village-Titan in the Port area and a tradi-

tion of local cineclubs, the Fédération Abel

Gance. This serves to promote the embryonic

regional film production, such as the work of

the pioneering Malagasy film-maker Ignace Solo

Randrasana, and his first feature film Ilo tsy

very, a Malagasy-Algerian co-production, about

the bloody anti-colonial insurrection of 1947.

The local television stations, the state-control-

led RFO and the private companies Canal

Réunion, TV4 and TV Sud, also produce local

documentaries, for instance, on the multicultural

music festival Kabaréunion in 1995.

In general, the multicultural, multilingual

variety of contemporary performing arts in the

Indian Ocean islands can be seen as a vibrant

example of post-colonial and postmodern crea-

tivity which, while enjoying the benefits of

francophone support networks, is developing

a hybrid culture which is capable of transcend-

ing the limits of French as a world language.

PETER HAWKINS

See also: francophone popular music: DOM-

TOMs; francophone writing (fiction, poetry):

Indian Ocean; theatre

francophone performing arts:

North Africa

Dramatic performance in the three countries

of the Maghreb (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco) is

marked by its multiple cultural inheritance: an

Arabic, Berber and Islamic tradition, to which

has been added the culture and language of

France, the colonial power from which inde-

pendence was only relatively recently won (by

francophone performing arts: North Africa

227

Tunisia and Morocco in 1956, and by Algeria

in 1962). The situation generated by this mul-

tiple inheritance for individuals and for crea-

tive art is modelled in Assia Djebar’s 1985

novel Love, Fantasia (L’Amour, la fantasia),

in terms which foreground issues relating to

public and private performative expression.

The Algerian-born cultural subject inherits in-

digenous performance traditions related to the

body, and primarily spectacular: the parades,

feasts and festivals of tribal tradition, eques-

trian displays for men (the fantasia), and, for

women, the dance. Oral performance is simi-

larly gender-divided: ululation for women and,

for men, the chanting of the Koran and all

forms of discursive speech. In Djebar’s text,

the acquisition of French produces a transfor-

mation of subject position which in its turn

transforms cultural performance. French intro-

duces both female and male speakers into the

equalizing discourse of bourgeois subjectivity,

into a post-Revolutionary history both demo-

cratic and secular, which redraws familiar

boundaries of action and speech. Djebar her-

self has largely confined her explorations to

the novel; in Maghrebin culture, religious and

social obstacles to female expression have been

especially potent in the domain of theatre. (In

the 1950s, when the middle-class public first

came to the theatre, special performances were

held for women.) Male Maghrebin writers,

however, have found in the multiple resources

of the postwar francophone stage, with its al-

liance of spectacle and word, the ideal vehicle

to project the tensions and transformations

attendant on the birth of their nations.

European theatre has been a cultural pres-

ence in the Maghreb from the beginning of

the twentieth century: French touring groups

were playing in Algeria as early as 1830. In

the 1920s and 1930s, Egyptian theatre troupes

introduced the French classical repertoire, es-

pecially the comedies of Molière. These led to

adaptations, and thereafter some original crea-

tions in literary Arabic and in the spoken dia-

lects. But the effective genesis of Maghrebin

drama was in the 1950s and 1960s, when the

energies of political liberation met up with the

subversions of an avant-garde politically en-

gaged European theatre. Writers, actors and

directors who have been key figures in the new

movement worked in Paris with Vitez,

Chéreau and Serreau.

Since independence, negotiation with the

bilingual performance tradition has seen two

distinct phases. In the 1960s, building a na-

tional drama, both in French and in literary

Arabic, was a key part of establishing national

cultural identities. The International Theatre

Directory (1973) testifies to some success in

developing the institutional infrastructure for

theatre in the Western mode. In Algeria, where

theatre became a nationalized monopoly in

1963, the Théâtre National Algérien ran five

theatres (in Algiers, Oran, Constantine, Sidi-

bel-Abbès and Annaba). Five other theatres

were managed and subsidized by the munici-

pal authorities, and the Petit Théâtre in Algiers

was given over to the youth of the FLN. Mo-

rocco boasted two theatres, in Casablanca

(founded 1922) and Rabat. Tunisia had one

professional theatre, the Théâtre Municipal de

Tunis, built in 1903, occupied by the Troupe

Municipal de Tunis, which was founded in

1953. In the 1950s, both Tunis and Morocco

created drama centres. The Directory of Thea-

tre, Dance and Folklore Festivals (1979) reg-

isters a complementary interest in developing

the festival. This was particularly evident in

Tunis, after the decentralization of drama in

the mid-1960s, and was encouraged by the

Tunisian National Tourist Office. Nineteen

annual festivals, throughout the regions, offer

a mixed diet of folklore, theatre, dance and

equestrian shows. The International Festival

of Carthage, held in the Roman amphitheatre,

was founded in 1964 to introduce the Tuni-

sian public to ‘the styles of classic expression

in the West’, but soon made equal space for

national productions. In the second stage, the

emphasis has been chiefly on the national, fo-

cusing on plays in modern literary Arabic,

Arabic dialects and Berber.

Francophone drama has developed differen-

tially in the three countries of the Maghreb. Mo-

rocco has a strong tradition of popular and ritual

drama, but literary drama is overshadowed by

the novel. In the 1950s, a few dramatists

francophone performing arts: North Africa