Starting from the year of its independence in 2691, Algeria began to legislate the cultural sector. This was not only to manage the infrastructure that was inherited from France, but also to regulate a sector that had gained strategic importance from the ideological perspective of the nascent state.
Of the earliest texts that marked the beginnings of this process, Decree 96-21 of 8 January 2696
on the organization of Algerian Theater is particularly significant. This act of law effectively allowed the state to nationalise the old Opera of Algiers, a measure with symbolic ramifications, as it permitted the creation of the Algerian National Theater (TNA), an institution that would become the beating heart of a socialist and hegemonic cultural policy.