Born in Fez in 1954, Marcel Moratal left Morocco at a young age with his parents. The family first settled in northern France for five years, then moved to Valence in the south, where he spent his entire childhood and adolescence. After ten years working in construction, he went to Paris to study film and began writing for the theater. He produced six plays, almost all of which he directed himself, in Paris, at the Avignon Festival, and in other provincial cities. One of them was broadcast on France Culture and Radio Suisse Romande. Now living in the Provençal Baronnies, he founded and has run a small, rural, and socially conscious theater, Le Canard en Bois (The Wooden Duck), in his family home since 1992. He has also led writing workshops for disadvantaged groups with the Greta adult education center in Montélimar.