In the sixties of the last century, a girl named "Saadia Akretif" stormed the stage of the municipal theater in Casablanca, headed like an arrow towards her sister's husband while he was performing his role in a play, shouting "My dear wife, your wife has given birth to a girl."

It was a spontaneous act by a ten-year-old girl who did not notice that the actors were performing their roles, but the director decided to make this scene part of the play, and with him the relationship of this child with the father of the arts began to become, after years, Soraya Gebran, the master of Moroccan theater.

At the age of 68, and after five decades of creativity, this chandelier was extinguished due to a struggle with cancer, which she faced with a smile, and faced all the obstacles that blocked her artistic path.

Human theater

Soraya Gibran belongs to the generation of artists who considered art a message, theater as a responsibility, and the woodwork as sacred. In her plays, she embodied the roles of the marginalized and the oppressed, defended their right to a decent life, called for social justice, and criticized corruption, injustice and oppression.

Art critic Mustafa Al-Taleb says that Thuraya Gebran theater "was a humane touching the issues of Moroccan society and interacting with them," adding that as she championed the concerns of her homeland, she also defended the concerns of the Arab nation, especially the Palestinian cause.

The student points out that Thuraya Gibran theater has "diligence, diversity and depth at the level of scenography, directing and diagnosis," and she has excelled in embodying personalities who have revolted against social, economic and political conditions.

According to him, she is "the model of an educated artist who believes in his message who sacrifices for her. Therefore, when Soraya died, the Moroccan society in all its spectrum sympathized with her, because society sympathizes with the honest artist and rallies around him."

Kidnapping and insulting

Soraya Gibran boldly and courageously defended her ideas and plays and did not raise the white flag to harassment, but rather paid the price when unknown persons kidnapped her in 1991 on her way to participate in a television program and shaved her hair before they released her, in an incident whose mysteries have not yet been dismantled.

She told about this incident in a press interview, and she said, "He put his (kidnapped) leg on my head, and my mouth was completely in the floor of the car. I was completely terrified, and I was crying and my throat dried out."

She added, "I did not know before what fear means, and that day I knew what fear is. He was slapping me, he came with scissors and started cutting my hair and he said: If you want to be a man for an hour, you should really be a man, and he kept cutting my hair with violence, hatred and ferocity without me." Pity at least the lashes of my head. "

Soraya Gibran boldly and courageously defended her ideas and plays (communication sites)

First female artist

Soraya became involved in political work from within the left, and in 2007, she appointed a minister of culture in a government led by the independent Abbas El Fassi, to be the first artist to hold a government position in Morocco's political history.

Close to her describe her as humility and commitment, and Moroccan director Ezz Al-Arab Al-Alawi says that when she learned of her appointment as a minister, she was still associated with filming his film "Ticket No. 13", and yet she remained faithful to her deadlines until the filming of the film ended. .

Masoud Bouhcine, president of the Moroccan Syndicate of Dramatic Art Professionals, says to Al Jazeera Net that Soraya proved false allegations about the artist's inability to assume political responsibilities, as her tenure, despite her shortness - she resigned after two years for health reasons - was rich in achievements and projects at the level of cultural infrastructure and social support for artists.

Bouhcine added that Thuraya Gebran focused on the daily concerns of citizens in her theater, and in the ministry she focused on improving the social conditions of artists.

Horizon and depth

Soraya Gibran moved like a butterfly between experimental comic and tragic theater, and she excelled in monodrama. The Moroccan troupes who produced theatrical works combined pleasure, gap and depth.

She participated in a number of Moroccan and Arab films and series, including "The Lion of the Desert", "Spring of Cordoba" and Saqr Quraish, "but she remained in the consciousness of the Moroccans, the lady of the stage" The Stage "and Soraya Abi El Funoon.

King Mohammed VI mourned her in a message of condolence to her family, in which he described her as "a distinguished artist and actress to whom everyone attests her abundant giving and her active and serious contribution to the development and radiance of theatrical and cinematic art and in the service of the national artistic and cultural field." Carrying out its governmental duties. "

Soraya Gebran received the honorary shield for artist Adel Imam in 2014 at the International Film Festival in Marrakech (communication sites)

The versatility of texts

Soraya Gibran excelled in choosing theatrical scripts and transferred literary and poetic works to the stage. Among those works is the play "Stories Without Borders", which is adapted from the texts of the late Syrian poet Mohamed Al Maghout, and the monodrama "Four Hours in Chatila" by the French writer Jean Genet, and "The Committee From the novel “Made for God Abraham,” and “The Sun is Dying”, quoted from the book of the Moroccan poet Abd al-Latif al-Laabi.

The artist, Soraya Gebran, was honored in national, Arab and international festivals, and she won awards and medals, the most important of which were the National Order of Merit and the Order of the French Republic for Arts and Letters.

Many Moroccan and Arab artists mourned her, and the artist Marcel Khalife wrote in her farewell, “When I met a wealthy person for the first time, and on my first visit to Morocco, at the height of her youth, she said,“ My age is now advanced and I have to pay attention to time, it reminds me that I wasted a lot.

Any day I don't work I feel very frustrated.

There are a few years left to realize the project that never materializes.

The theater is freed from the burden of its history.

From the burden of reality.

Of course, an impossible process, but I have to strive.

I have to try and believe it exists in order to search for the impossible theater. "