Following performances in Fez and Meknes, Mohamed Ouachen’s play “The Unknown Legacy” will make a stop on April 1 at the Salle Bahnini in Rabat, with the support of the Hassan II Foundation for Moroccans Living Abroad (MRE). Conceived as a tribute to sociologist and writer Fatema Mernissi, this play revolves around a letter and an inheritance.

 

“Five women and one man find themselves summoned to a notary’s office. The news came as a bolt from the blue: they have been designated to inherit a fortune and a theater. But on one absurd and captivating condition: they must discover the identity of the deceased… before the end of the day,” recounts the Belgian-Moroccan author and director.

 

Through their quest, he propels his characters toward “places steeped in symbolism—a living room, a library, a café—where certainties waver.” They implicitly question the value of the true legacy: is it money, a struggle, an idea, or liberation?

 

In a collective and personal dynamic, Mohamed Ouachen conceived his play through a theater workshop with a group of women in Molenbeek, at the initiative of Malika Saissi, the project’s producer, who sought to “pay tribute to the thought of Fatima Mernissi.”

 

“These women, most of whom are of Moroccan origin, had a strong, almost visceral desire: to take the stage to tell their stories, their journeys, and their experiences as women of immigrant backgrounds, torn between two cultures, between family heritage and personal emancipation,” explains Mohamed Ouachen.

 

The show becomes a space for them to express themselves, while highlighting a “visionary sociologist and feminist” who has “dissected the mechanisms of patriarchy in the Arab-Muslim world.” From there, Mohamed Ouachen says he structured the play’s dramaturgy as a theatrical thriller, “so that the collective voice of these women becomes the vehicle for the tribute.”

 

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