Winner of the Miramar program, Marc-Aurèle Ngoma, who graduated from Villa Arson in 2024, completed a residency at the Les Étoiles Cultural Center in Fez, Morocco, from October 6 to November 2, 2025.
Marc-Aurèle Ngoma
An artist, playwright, and director based in Marseille, Marc-Aurèle has developed a practice situated at the intersection of theater and performance. His work questions the conditions of production, circulation, and reception of artistic forms, as well as the mechanisms that shape aesthetic experiences. Based on these questions, he designs dramatic and participatory environments closely linked to the cultural and political issues of specific territories and groups. His approach considers culture as a space of resistance for communities deprived of political or economic power, but also as a possible place for reformulating these powers. For him, dramatic creation is thus part of a continuous search for forms of solidarity capable of supporting the emergence of political, cultural, and economic agency.
Miramar Residence – Fez, Morocco
During his residency in Fez, Marc-Aurèle developed a research and creative project in collaboration with several cultural organizations in the medina, notably the Les Étoiles de la Médina de Fès Center, which hosted him, and the Iklyle Center. At each of these venues, he led theater and choreography workshops with volunteer participants. These workshops formed the starting point for research into the conditions and modalities of producing a dramatic work. Grounded in both decolonial and communist perspectives, this research involved a profound transformation of his own artistic practice.
The research focused on dramatic writing process free from any prior text, placing scenic and choreographic composition at the very heart of the creative process.Through exercises, discussions, and spontaneous proposals, working tools emerged based on the pooling of knowledge, experiences, and sensibilities of everyone involved.
This process has opened up several avenues for reflection, particularly around the questioning of the figure of the author as the individual appropriation of a collective production, and around the emergence of forms and subjects resulting from a genuine socialization of intelligence and expertise.
This work resulted in the creation of a play in dialogue with the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, linking the issues raised by the poet’s words on the Palestinian cause with the realities of Morocco and Fez through the participants’ involvement in the creative process.
Acknowledgments
Players: Members of the Centre les Etoiles de la Médina in Fez: Mouad Nachit, Oumayma Majraoua, Ghita Idrissi, Oualid El gou, Mohamed Lamnouar, Othmane Belhossine, Fatima-Zahra Sanhaji, Othmane el kadri, Douae Houkroumi, Hamza Lazaar, Somia Badri.
Lights : Reda Amrani
Musics : featuring the band Arinass, Ilyass Rchouk & Tarik Hjjij.
Residency coordination: Brahim-Zarkani, residency coordinator – affiliated with the French Institute in Fez, Fatima-Zahrae Elbich, cultural mediator, translator, and coordinator – affiliated with the Centre les étoiles de la Médina in Fez.
Iklyle Center in Fez: Kenza Kazouz, director of the Iklyle Cultural Center in Fez, Reda Matich, artist and researcher in dramatic arts, educational animation trainer, cultural consultant.
the Miramar network
Miramar is a Mediterranean network of academic, artistic, and cultural actors that aims to support the professional development of young artists and art workers and to create opportunities for cultural exchange based on solidarity, reciprocity, and hospitality. In 2025, the program offered six residencies in the Mediterranean to graduates of the eight member institutions of the L’École(s) du Sud network. Miramar is funded by the French Institute of Morocco, the French Institute of Tunisia, Xarkis NGO, and L’École(s) du Sud.
