The spiritual and intellectual capital of the Kingdom, whose millennial history and thousand charms are sung about, is devoid of a theatre worthy of its stature as a metropolis and its prestigious past.

The tenth International Festival of Professional Theatre, recently held in Fez under the theme "Towards the institutionalisation of professional theatre", unveiled a bitter reality in which the Idrissid city has been wallowing for ages. Indeed, the spiritual and intellectual capital of the Kingdom, whose millennial history and thousand charms are sung about, is devoid of a theatre worthy of its stature as a metropolis and its prestigious past.

The "auditorium" of the Fez Al Hourria municipal cultural complex, which serves as a theatre, has shown its limits.

Theatre people from Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, as well as the media and the public, gathered recently in this complex, spent moments punctuated by inconveniences due in particular to unbearable heat.

With the heatwave that the city of Fez has experienced in recent weeks, combined with a lack of air conditioning, the auditorium took on the appearance of a sauna.

Both at the opening and closing of the festival, the organisers, including the president of the regional section of the Moroccan Union of Theatre Professionals of Fez, Hassan Alaoui Mrani, did not cease to launch appeals to officials and public authorities for the construction of a theatrical complex to international standards and theatres in each urban district of Greater Fez. According to the organisers, the International Festival of Professional Theatre is usually held every year during the month of October, but with the redevelopment project of the Al Hourria Cultural Complex, the tenth edition of this event was brought forward.

This cultural complex, which houses a media library and which extends over more than a hectare, shocks with its dilapidation, with in particular shops with broken doors, floors littered with rubbish and walls blackened with tags and other unpleasant inscriptions.

A facelift and re-equipping of this municipal cultural complex would prove beneficial for this space for meetings and conferences.