La Pièce Théâtrale Lalla Manana un Fait Pionnier dans la Production Artistique Genre au Maroc

Abstract: The article analyzes the play Bnat Lalla Manana as a Moroccan adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba. Performed by the Moroccan Tacon theater company since 2004, the play represents an important example of a new form of women’s writing in Moroccan theater. The study explores how the play addresses women’s conditions, power relations, and the social norms that regulate the female body and women’s freedom.

The play tells the story of an authoritarian mother who imposes seclusion on her daughters after the death of their father. This closed domestic space becomes a site of tension and conflict between individual desire and social control. The daughters attempt to resist maternal and patriarchal domination, particularly through their relationship to desire, the body, and seduction. The arrival of a man in the village acts as a catalyst, revealing rivalry among the sisters, their emotional aspirations, and their accumulated frustrations.

The article emphasizes that the play does not merely portray women as victims. Instead, the female characters become active agents in shaping their own experiences and challenging dominant representations of femininity in Moroccan theater and cinema. The actresses use the body, movement, voice, and costume to create an autonomous artistic expression. These dimensions are examined through several sociological and theoretical approaches.

The study draws on the concepts of Pierre Bourdieu to analyze the Moroccan artistic field and the mechanisms of symbolic domination that have historically limited women’s participation in artistic creation. It also mobilizes Marcel Mauss’s concept of “techniques of the body” to show how movement, posture, and Moroccan clothing become forms of cultural and social expression. In addition, the work of Judith Butler and Laura Mulvey on gender performativity is used to explain how the actresses deconstruct gender norms through theatrical performance.

Finally, the study concludes that Bnat Lalla Manana represents a form of artistic and social resistance. The play transforms the stage into a space for critiquing gender relations and redefining female identity in contemporary Moroccan society.

Keywords: gender, Artistic field, theatrical performance, gender performativity, symbolic violence,  the body, the representation of femininity, symbolic domination.