Testostérone: A Theatrical Masterpiece
By Majid JALLOULI
On Saturday, November 14, 2025, in an artistic atmosphere at "Elhamra," a theater of all arts, Cyrine Gannoun, the mistress of the house, presented her new creation, "Testostérone," to her guests. The play, written by Cyrine Gannoun and Hamdi Hadda, was performed by Bahri Rahali and Abdelmonem Chouayet. This creation was first presented at the Carthage Theater Days in 2025 and then went on a national and international tour.
The one-hour show begins with a questioning between two men, where one asks the other, "Who are you?" The response is, "You don't know me?" The conversation continues in a state of confusion, with the audience unsure of who is who, until it becomes apparent that the one asking the questions may be the invisible part of the other. Perhaps, we conclude too quickly that this is the conscience of a simple citizen, living a simple life, confronting his doubts.
As the play progresses, we realize that this citizen, like many Tunisians, is bitten, wounded, and even invaded by this conscience. It seems to constitute a wound in his relationships with himself, his wife, his child, and everyone else attached to his daily life. His memories of his childhood, his upbringing, and the way he was prepared for life, which was full of constraints, shape his current state. He is torn between his desire to please his parents and his own desires, which he has never fulfilled. This suffering is so intense that he wants to escape with force and energy.
Instead of screaming or vomiting his hatred towards those who caused this suffering, he chooses calm compassion. It is only at this moment that the knot that twists his stomach loosens, making room for a nervous sweetness and a vivid calm in the confrontation.
Throughout the show, we realize that this citizen, beyond any suspicion, has lived his life as if it were destined for others. A frank, rough, hard, and violent exchange is established between what we continue to think is a simple man living a simple life and his conscience. One confesses, the other accuses, and pushes the first to recognize his errors, his flaws, and his weaknesses.
A rebellion manifests in calmness when what we think is "conscience" installs a mental pressure and digs into the political and religious thoughts of this citizen, who does not want confrontation. The accused is blamed for political cowardice and religious submission.
A calm but furious exchange takes place as the citizen defends himself against these accusations, which he considers unfounded, generated by circumstances beyond his control, beyond his intellect, and influenced by economic, social, and political factors.
This intense magma fuses inside a wounded soul seeking not guilt but an explanation for its family, parental, relational, social, intellectual, political, and religious deficiencies. The theater is not the world of catharsis, experienced by the character and transmitted to the spectator, as defined in Aristotle's Poetics as a purgation.
From the beginning of the show, the question of "Time" is highlighted. "I've been waiting for three hours," says one character. "No, you've been waiting for 51 years, three months, four days, eight hours, five minutes, and three seconds," responds the other. The punctuation of the parable of our life in the course of history could be outside of our will if we do not master it consciously, programmed, and decided.
Thus, we risk putting our life at the mercy of others and outside of our will. It is only at this precise moment that we suffer the constraint of the immersion of others in our life. We put ourselves in a state of living according to the goodwill of others, as our character has done and told.
He let himself be guided, at every crucial moment of his life, once by his mother, once by his father, and a third time by his wife, until he became someone else, knowing it but unable to do anything to free himself. Controlling Time is the subject of the object of life in "Testostérone."
Beyond what the play proposes as a discourse submitted to reflection, it is the way these subjects are treated that predominates. It is a kind of philosophy that presents simplicity in the treatment of what happens to us as a mode of thought that Cyrine Gannoun proposes for reflection. Her way of seeing, conceiving, and managing life, Time, and history.
It would be better to be calm and serene when facing and analyzing what happens to us, whether personally or collectively, rather than getting nervous and mobilizing all our "testosterones" and acting blindly.
The Play: Theater Rediscovers its Gestus In "Testostérone," the theatrical treatment, namely the game, scenography, and staging, attracts the spectator's attention. The game has become a character accompanying our two characters. Based on the Brechtian conception of the epic game, the actor's game in "Testostérone" uses the "gestus" not to accomplish a theatrical act but to pronounce a type of social relationship and attitude towards a given problem, a lived state, or a contested person.
Sublime Abdelmonem Chouayet and superb Bahri Rahali in their acting performances. Their expressive gestures refer to the relationships between their characters, between their discourses, and between themselves and the space that surrounds them.
This enigmatic space, which only wants to announce itself as a theatrical space, with oversized decorative elements that encumber this almost empty space, is the only flaw in the show. Fortunately, it is an adjustable defect.
The displaced body, the saccadic hand, the graduated gaze, calculating the advance in space to measure the spatial and temporal distance of conflictual or friendly relationships in the dramatic narrative, make the actor's game a bright and brilliant point of the show.
It is a choice of staging made by Cyrine Gannoun to better express the sense of Time and the expression of the social and relational carried by actors who have grasped the meaning of a distancing that associates the emotional and the reflected.
Strong emotion maintained scenographically by a almost psychiatric music, referring to American westerns in its violence, concocted by Hamza Bouchnak, with video projections of film and illustrated in a role-playing game by the actors, announcing to the spectators that they have strayed, thinking they were following a story of a chance encounter between two ordinary citizens.
I won't say more; go see the play, and you will find great pleasure and discover a wandering soul, well installed in its armchair.
"Testostérone" is a theatrical show that closes the doors to aggressive treatments, previously announced, directly put forward, roughly arranged, and violently expressed, of the political problems that have shaken the country since 2011. However, it is also a show where everything is said through acts and situations with finesse and intelligence.
A moving moment in the evening, outside the show, when Cyrine, in tribute to her friend Mourad Zguidi, regrets his absence, saying that he never misses a premiere at Elhamra since she has known him. She regrets that he is where he is and not in the room with her other guests.
M.J.
