Turkish Independent Issue 4 | Page 21

June 2013
21
News

İzel SEYLANİ alienationuk @ gmail . com

My Food , My Love and Emergent Phenomena ....
Costume , light , actor , actress , method , principle , limit , playwright , text , audience , stage ... Great Greek , Shakespeare , Sophocles , Hamlet , Oedipus , Brecht , Three penny opera , King Lear , Media , Catharsis , Humanism , Renaissance ...
When all of those are used together , the product usually and typically points on the conventional forms of art which have been performed all around the world for years . I do admire conventional forms of acting , staging and aesthetics whereas this article is about to discuss new forms of art , alternative acting and staging methods and devising theatre ...
I admire Great Greek tragedies because of their cathartic nature which unconsciously affects the audience ideologically and philosophically as a result of an emotional purification and cleansing . The protagonist consciously prefers struggling and fighting against his destiny and dies for his ambition ... It is believed that ; as the audience internalize the characters ’ situation during the play , the audience experience an extreme change in their emotions as a result of their internalization of the characters bad-end . Correspondingly ; it is believed that ; in their real lives ; the audience avoid immoral and unethical behaviour . This is a classic dogmatic ideology of Great Greek Tragedies which prevents the hostile tendency and the antisocial behaviour of individuals in the society ...
Shakespeare ’ s theatre is another form of art which has had a seriously significant role in the art history . As well as humanistic weaknesses ; Shakespeare ’ s theatre presents values of humanistic philosophy and the conflict between the old and the new ... the old represents the feudatory which is the political and social system of Medieval Europe ... and the new represents humanistic values which comes up by Renaissance and centers on human and their values , needs , interests , dignity and freedom . As well as exploring and representing the philosophical conflict of old and new , Shakespeare represents the difference and conflicts of the attitudes of individuals grown up in contrast social background . Hamlet realizes and believes that his father has been killed by Hamlet ’ s uncle ; whereas Hamlet cannot take an action against his uncle so easily even though his uncle wears his father ’ s crown and marries his mother . Hamlet represents the values of humanism that prefers rational thoughts and evidence over established doctrine or faith for such a crime and revenge .
Theatre directors have been staging such plays for years . Many different forms and methods of acting and staging have been tried for those plays . The plays have very strong philosophical , psychological contents , which makes hard to use alternative forms of theatre and see if it works ...
I really like watching , directing , performing classic plays with classic methods of acting whereas I call classic art as food and water which an artist cannot live without ... but I will tell you about my passion and love today ... which is a company called “ Us from the Old ”...
“ Us from the Old ” is a multicultural performance group , founded a month ago . It is multicultural because there are Cypriot Greek , Cypriot Turkish , English and Turkish performers cooperating in the group . “ Us from the Old ” is preparing a devised theatre performance about war and post-war trauma inspired from Cyprus War but not directly mentioned or pointed out in the performance . The performance was inspired by division of countries and separated people who had individually experienced the war , lost their families , homes , love , happiness and peace and passed the war trauma as a cultural heritage on the next generations . The trauma kept its existence for years and transformed from fear to hatred but over time the trauma has become weak and weaker ... The performance represents the post-war trauma of the individuals and the new generations coming over the trauma over time ...
This project and its progress became my passion because it is the first experimental devised theatre project to be performed in Cyprus against the classic forms and classic contents of theatre so far ... I am directing the performance in cooperation with two art directors ; artist Umay Yılmaz and dramaturge / playwright Aliye Ummanel .
As it is going to be the first devised theatre project and each devised theatre play would be different from each other ; I would like to give some information about the structure in terms of technique , form and style of the performance .
First of all ; physical theatre is playing a very significant role through the performance . As it is multicultural ; language or rhetoric is not a dominant or determinant factor . As well as contact body movements , performers are making Acapella music and body percussion in the performance for representing the war , solidarity and musical parts . This non-verbal base provides an international nature to the performance that it can address any war situation around the world and be understood and perceived by any nation and any language speaker ...
Stanislavsky acting method has been preferred for representing the trauma in the individuals ’ lives ... whereas the structure of the performance is based on both Aristotelian and non-Aristotelian drama . Epic Theatre approach has also been used in the performance . Classical dramatic ( Aristotelian ) episodes are interrupted by alienating elements such as body percussions and Acapella for representing a tank performed by the ensemble which breaks the illusion and provides the audience a space for critically analyzing the thesis and what is performed . ( Those parts emphasize the darkness and the chaos of the war and its impact such as a trauma on individuals .)
As it is a devised theatre project it is not textbased but has a very inspirational and strong dramaturgic base as a consequence of organised collaborative creation process exploring the war , trauma and the overcome . In devised theatre ; the thesis of the performance usually rises from the performers but what I observed was much more than a thesis but really sincere attitude of people which was deep and full of hope and peace ... I can sum up as : “ over time , new generations started to come over the war trauma and its effects . There may be people having nightmares sometimes ; whereas in real life the war trauma does not exist in our cultural heritage and moreover it is not passed on the new generations as a threat anymore ...”
“ Us from the Old ” s performance is characterized by emergent phenomena which I define the process as a spontaneous development of self-perception among ensembles that can neither be predicted nor explained ...