The theater is just a stone’s throw from the monolithic Interior Ministry, notorious for its torture chambers under President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and site of the protests that deposed him two years ago. L’Étoile du Nord, always a place for the free spirited, was a gathering place for protesters and a shelter from the tear gas in those days.

Noureddine El Ati, a Tunisian actor and stage director who founded L’Étoile du Nord in 1997, says it is unlike other theaters in North Africa. “All the other theaters open 15 minutes before the play and close 15 minutes after, and then they lose contact with their audience, with the people,” he said.

Trained in Paris and Strasbourg, Mr. El Ati, 67, worked for 30 years in Europe and even toured the United States before deciding to return home and give something back to his country and to its disadvantaged youth.

“People who are abandoned, without a project, for whom the state does nothing and who are lost — they have to do something or they become aggressive,” he said. “They become animals.”

There is no stage in his theater, and the actors perform in and around the audience. “So we are questioning: Is this interior or exterior? Are we acting or not? Is this real or not?” said Mr. El Ati, who says he wants “to go as far from the conventional as possible.”