Coin Maidens: The Women of Ouled Nail

The women of Ouled Nail deserve an opera, or a movie, or a novel, or at least web series. What are people watching nowadays?

Their tribe is from the country, but the girls move to the city to work the streets. They aren't prostitutes, they're buskers, and they dance for money from passersby, hoping to raise enough to go home with a dowry so they can get married.

Some girls work the streets for years. People don't get it, although tourists love it. I would like to show a range of participants' attitudes, through a show about them. It would be like Stage Door, or Fame. Definitely a show biz movie, not a National Geographic type documentary with Orientalist goals. No, a show biz movie, because these dames are tough, scrappy artists living on the edge. Like in Rent, or a Chorus Line, or There's No Business Like Show Business. More Ethel Merman than Mata Hari

The girls, aged 12-15, go off in a cohort to the big city, with stars in their eyes. One is only ten, biologically too young, but of all the girls she's the only one doing it for love of dance so she stows away. Maybe her mother is a Christian convert who has come to believe that dancing is wrong, so the young girl gets away while she can.

Another girl, aged 12, is her best friend and maybe cousin. She's scared to go, but she has to. She would like to just skip right to the happy family life and skip the scary part where you live in the city among strangers, dodging rapists and robbers. She's the character that represents that this is a rite-of-passage that must be faced; it's an ordeal in the technical, anthropological sense.

Another girl is 13. She's plucky, she loves adventure. She doesn't question things.

Another girl is 14. She's not interested in earning money to get married. She's interested in earning money and staying in the city. She wants a modern life with TV and the Internet.

Another girl is 15. She already knows who she wants to marry, and she would like to do this ASAP. She and her crush have an understanding that she will dance as well and as fast as she can, so she can get rich quickly. Her unrealistic plan is to be home in a year.

At the end of Act 1, the girls arrive at the city.