One of this season’s new plays, “Geçen Gün” offers theatergoers a different kind of experience with its sound design, dynamic direction and energetic performances
Müjde Işıl*
How do you tell a familiar city story differently? “Geçen Gün”, one of this season’s new plays, has been staged to give more than one answer to this question. It has a story, and the performers of that story are not only the actors, but also the sounds constructed on stage and a dynamism that never loses its rhythm… In the play, written by Kerem Kurdoğlu and directed by Naz Erayda and Kurdoğlu, Esme Madra and Ozan Çelik take the stage, accompanied by the music of Tophane Noise Band. The result is a play that could be called performance theater, one that involves the audience in an experience beyond the ordinary.
Yes, this is a city story… One could also call it an Istanbul story in which all contrasts are lived out. A city accompanied by the cries of seagulls yet overwhelmed by the noise of traffic, safe in the crowd yet uncanny on deserted streets, where, between sometimes getting lost and sometimes running into a soulmate, the shift between being civilized and getting into a fight takes only seconds… Our two protagonists, one a woman and the other a man, encounter all kinds of events and people as they walk down the street amid the chaos of the city. City life has filled us with so much anxiety that even a gesture of kindness makes the other person suspicious. The play makes the audience dream that two strangers who happen to come together to help another stranger might be free of these anxieties and hold on to each other.
Esme Madra and Ozan Çelik, whom we also know well from cinema, physically reflect the bustle of city life on stage with great dynamism. Now they walk in place, now they run, now they go up and down stairs. Tophane Noise Band, meanwhile, create the sounds and music of the city with their unusual instruments while also accompanying Madra and Çelik as performers. If you are open to styles beyond classical narratives, “Geçen Gün” promises an experience that will meet your expectations. The play can be seen at Kundura Sahne.
*This article was published in the February 22 issue of the Milliyet newspaper.
“With the incredibly fast-paced and harmonious performance of its two actors, its set made up of a few pieces that are constantly given new functions, and its accomplished stage and lighting design, ‘Geçen Gün’ is a production you watch with bated breath.”
Asu Maro*
This is what city life has become. We can’t feel completely safe anywhere. The moment we step out of our homes, our ‘cocoons’ (and not even there, which brings to mind Adalet Ağaoğlu’s “Kozalar” [Cocoons]), we are alone, tiny, and everyone seems to be coming at us. Will someone shove us with a shoulder, will someone snatch our phone and run, will someone make a snide remark, what will happen to make us feel awful? We can’t tell. We are anxious, fearful. Like the two people we watched in “Geçen Gün” at Beykoz Kundura.
“Geçen Gün”, the new season production of Kundura Sahne, a venue with an impressive atmosphere, bears the signature of Naz Erayda and Kerem Kurdoğlu, the founders of Kumpanya, which has created its own audience with its extraordinary works since 1991. The text was written by Kerem Kurdoğlu, who also co-directed it with Naz Erayda. Two people on stage, a woman and a man, tell us city stories, completing and sometimes repeating each other’s sentences. Events that any of us might experience “the other day”. On the bus someone might press right up against us, someone might kick the bodywork of a car, someone might cut in front of everyone in line, a security guard might rudely ask for our ID… “We’d know how to deal with them, of course,” but we can’t; we are civilized people, we are against violence. We are left loathing ourselves for days.
From the promotional text: “Two people who constantly encounter each other, pass each other by, collide, but never truly see each other. They try to cope with the city. One moment they are the victims, the next they are gnawed by guilt”… One night, these two anxious city dwellers, played by Esme Madra and Ozan Çelik, are followed by someone on a dark street. Or so they think. And of course they think this pursuit has bad intentions. “The things they read about in the news do happen to someone, after all,” don’t they?” It is one of those moments when we quicken our steps, get ready to turn around and scream, and secretly search our bag for something to defend ourselves with. You probably know that feeling very well. And that strange mix of embarrassment and relief that comes when the harm you expected turns out to be a kindness…
With the incredibly fast-paced and harmonious performance of its two actors, its set made up of a few pieces that are constantly given new functions, and its accomplished stage and lighting design, “Geçen Gün” is a production you watch with bated breath. As for the music of Tophane Noise Band, who give a surprising performance on instruments made from urban waste (buckets, water jugs, lids), it is, in a word, dizzying. Just like the city itself.
*This article was published in the February 15, 2024 issue of the Milliyet newspaper.
Made up of Mustafa Kemal Emirel and Yiğit Özatalay, the acclaimed piano-and-drums duo Yürüyen Merdiven returns to the stage at Kundura Sinema once again to accompany silent films live. On an evening when the duo will be joined by German Jazz Prize–winning saxophonist and composer Angelika Niescier, two films starring Asta Nielsen, “The Abyss” (1910) and “The Black Dream” (1911), will meet audiences on the big screen. Ahead of the screening, we asked Yürüyen Merdiven about their latest work and what awaits us that night.
It is a wonderful feeling, of course. Over 20 years we have released 3 studio albums and 1 live album, which is a big achievement for us. Rather than following rising values and “trends”, we listened to the music within us and to our common sense, and we also tried to say something about the society we live in… Looking back, even though we feel we have come a long way, there is still a lot of work to do and many paths to explore.
Integrating our music with other art forms and with life makes us happy. As Hanns Eisler said, one who understands only music cannot understand music either. The abstraction of music as pure music is very powerful, of course, but when it is combined with concrete elements such as words or images, its expressive power multiplies. So yes, we want to keep taking part in interdisciplinary projects.
We can say that the idea came from our friend Devrim Dikkaya and came to life through his efforts. We went through a four-year composing process and worked meticulously. We think we produced a cohesive work in harmony with Ceylan’s aesthetic. It has been one of the works we have enjoyed most among everything we have produced so far.
Asta Nielsen in “The Abyss”, 1910.
Combining music with drama is a very broad subject, open to different approaches. So every new film broadens our horizons and adds to our experience in this field. When we recall the live performance to a silent film we gave at Beykoz Kundura five years ago, we can see how far we have come and how much we have grown since then.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Climates could be a good choice…
We tried to prepare a rich program. Of course, presenting this content also requires great care on our part. We must admit that at first we were anxious about how we would set these films to music, but as we worked on them we found many methods and opportunities for elaboration. We hope the audience enjoys it as much as we do.
Our paths crossed with Angelika thanks to a mutual friend (Eloisa Manera). When she came to work at the Tarabya Cultural Academy in 2017, and again the following year, we played several concerts together and developed a very good rapport. So much so that our last two albums each include a track we recorded with Angelika. For this project, Kemal and I did extensive preparatory work on selecting the musical material and combining it with the drama, and we communicated with Angelika through clear directions, much like in a director–actor relationship.
“The hallmark of ‘Geçen Gün’, and what sets it apart from its contemporaries, is that it evokes an innovative, horizontally structured understanding of theater.”
Gülin Dede Üstün*
Naz Erayda and Kerem Kurdoğlu, known for their search for new forms beyond prevailing approaches to theater, have come before us with Geçen Gün, their first joint work apart from their individual projects since Kumpanya, the company they founded in 1991 and one of the cornerstones of Turkish theater history. The play, which we had the chance to see at Beykoz Kundura’s Kundura Sahne, a stage that has hosted alternative performance explorations from Türkiye and abroad since its founding, is also the first theater production produced by Kundura Sahne. With the presence of Tophane Noise Band, which brought this collaboration about and serves both as the project’s executive producer and, in a sense, as one of its performers, we have the chance to witness one of the most singular partnerships of recent times.
Two people in the city: on stage, Esme Madra and Ozan Çelik tell us of a series of encounters, blending the meanings and anxieties they attach to the intersections they experience in everyday life with space, time, body, sound, material and light. Having to travel to a distant corner of the city to watch this series of encounters also lets you view the meaning the play offers from a closer vantage point once you arrive. My own visit to Geçen Gün’s world began at the end of a long but enjoyable journey, made up of a taxi ride on a cold winter day, a Bosphorus ferry departing from Üsküdar, and a walk through the unfamiliar streets of Beykoz, taking the long way around. Perhaps that is why, while watching Geçen Gün, influenced by the encounters and conversations I had along the way, Walter Benjamin’s concept of the flâneur (the idle city wanderer) suddenly came to mind. First, I tried to remember what kind of relationship I, as Gülin, have with the street. Idleness, with the aspects that bring it both very close to and very far from the play and from myself, kept circling in my head. In the streets once roamed by the city’s bohemian, thinking wanderers, Erayda and Kurdoğlu’s characters wandered somewhat more uneasily, even grumpily. I, on the other hand, was trying to build a more peaceful relationship with the street despite all the unease one might encounter. Yet at the same time, rather than watching like a flâneur, I too, like the play’s characters, was engaging more with those whose paths crossed mine and with what I witnessed. But every time they engaged, they felt more threatened. Although it ultimately reaches for a hopeful smile, and although the text written by Kurdoğlu tries to make peace with the city with the words “What a fascinating city this is. Every corner is beautiful in its own way. Every corner holds another surprise,” it also betrays the uncanniness in which it is trapped with these words: “The other day I was walking down the street. With this really baaad feeling inside. Something ominous. As if something bad could happen at any moment. As if the street was darker than ever.”
This “energetic!” unease spread throughout the story will no doubt also strike the classical theatergoer through its mode of storytelling. Many of the means of conveyance we are used to encountering are absent from this play. The audience is met with a narrative that begins by deconstructing language and relies on repetition. Although this at times causes moments of disconnection from the play, Erayda and Kurdoğlu’s direction knows how to win the audience back very quickly. In a sense, it both draws the audience in and leaves them room to keep their distance. The stories the actors share by breaking them apart word by word turn into sentences and paragraphs as the minutes pass. As their words multiply, so do the materials that accompany their journey. As the simple, unpretentious choice of text merges with music and dance, stairs, slopes and bricks appear in their path. The Tophane Noise Band team, whom we see at times as singers when the text turns into music, at times as dancers through their performances, at times as operators creating the city’s ambiance with discarded materials at the back, and at times as city builders placing obstacles in the actors’ way, become part of the story as a kind of third performer, and the text is enriched by their presence.
Although we are familiar with their spirit from the works of the Çıplak Ayaklar Kumpanyası, I first encountered Tophane Noise Band’s early sounds in the Podacto project, an audio theater experience. The group, which brings to life music performances built from sounds drawn from discarded materials that Mihran Tomasyan collected in the storeroom of his ÇAK workshop, has evidently turned its collaboration with Erayda and Kurdoğlu into a laboratory work. Like flâneurs searching the streets for what is original and unique, they have set out in pursuit of that originality and uniqueness together with all the other disciplines with which they have joined forces. The movement arrangement by Tomasyan and Maral Ceranoğlu forms the backbone of the play almost like a form of direction. Madra and Çelik shine on stage, never letting their high-effort pace drop, while also commanding the fragmented text. They have become a seamless duo on stage, with neither overshadowing the other. Utku Kara’s lighting design remains in my memory as one of the most dazzling lighting designs of the year. When Tophane Noise Band’s long workbench, made up of materials and also defining the dimensions of the stage, comes together with Beykoz Kundura’s restored architecture and the lighting design, it turns into a magnificent spectacle. At this point, I think the hallmark of Geçen Gün, and what sets it apart from its contemporaries, is that it evokes an innovative, horizontally structured understanding of theater.
The play’s promotional text asks itself, and perhaps us, the following questions:
“Is this a concert? / A dance show? / A play? / A performance? / None of them. / All of them.”
Geçen Gün is an experience in which, whichever one you take away, you can answer yes for the others. It truly is both all of them and none of them.
*This article was published on Argontolar.com. (February 9, 2024)
“For those who feel the exhaustion of questioning their own concepts and of striving not to succumb to violence, within personal spaces brazenly narrowed by those who see civilization as a single-toothed monster, Geçen Gün is a stage event that comes like a remedy.”
Münip Melih Korukçu* – Faculty Member, Department of Drama and Acting, Faculty of Fine Arts, Istanbul Aydın University (İAÜ)
Naz Erayda and Kerem Kurdoğlu… Easy to say, but they are the founders of Kum.Pan.Ya, the ambitious company of 30 years ago… A duo I came to know and admire in 1999, when I was preparing my graduation thesis titled Experimental Theater in Türkiye and TAL, and whose friendship later honored me… The brain trust of Kum.Pan.Ya, which pierced the institutional dominance of 1980s Turkish theater and, with its avant-garde works, created a powerful alternative to the moldy, museum-piece theater that Peter Brook defined as ‘The Deadly Theater’… Of course, however you look at them, such descriptions can turn into a reductive approach. But the main reason I begin the article this way is not so much to express the place they hold for me as to emphasize their importance for Turkish theater. To this emphasis one might also add the need to remind us of what is truly alternative, at a time when someone who gets hold of a projector and tries to force-feed different variations of the theme of othering, turned into a tasting menu, through a microphone placed at the front of the stage, is considered alternative. The new work of this remarkable duo, who in everything they do not only seek but actually find what is new and different in both substance and form, Geçen Gün, with its ever-relevant agenda, deserves attention today as one of the finest examples of alternative theater!
Aiming for a holistic theatrical language, the duo, as in their other productions under the Kum.Pan.Ya banner, applies in the creative process of Geçen Gün, this time a Kundura Sahne production, a method based on the mutual interaction among all elements, rather than the typical creative template of “play + dramaturgy + director’s interpretation + performance of the play + set + the contribution of light and sound effects”. For instance, an idea brought by the lighting design may give rise to ideas that require parts of the play’s text to be rewritten. Striving to preserve this dialectical relationship of creativity to the very end, the duo begins by identifying an element as the starting point, a touchstone from which all the other elements will make their first leap, and analyzing it thoroughly so that it can take on a quality that provokes the creativity of the other elements. This igniting element may be a text, but it may just as well be a space or a lighting design. The productions achieve their wholeness through the relationship and creative interaction this igniting element establishes with the other elements.
As I leave the play, a sentence from Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther rings in my mind: “The world is a hell for sensitive hearts.” Anyone who believes they carry a sensitive heart may feel that they have been dragged into their own hell while trying not to fall into the traps of polarizing politics in today’s Türkiye, where, for the last twenty years, ignorance, boorishness and rudeness have systematically become the rising values. For those who feel the exhaustion of questioning their own concepts and of striving not to succumb to violence, within personal spaces brazenly narrowed by those who see civilization as a single-toothed monster, Geçen Gün is a stage event that comes like a remedy…
I say event because the play’s program presents it as: “Is this a concert? A dance show? A play? A performance? None of them. All of them.” It would not be wrong at all to say that it is a fine example of interdisciplinarity. A Kundura Sahne production, Geçen Gün is an event written by Kerem Kurdoğlu and directed by him together with Naz Erayda. Sound/Word/Movement are the three key components of this one-act event.
Looking at the sound component, we see an orchestra made up of everyday objects positioned at the back of the stage. Formed by a broom, a frying pan, a water jug, a sewing machine and a host of other unrelated objects, the orchestra turns the event into a concert. The sound design is by Tophane Noise Band (Serkan Aka, Mihran Tomasyan, Selim Cizdan, Ufuk Fakıoğlu). Besides being one of the main components of the event, it takes on an organic form through its interaction with all the other staging elements, and with this form it also aestheticizes the structure directed from the stage toward the audience.
Looking at the movement component, we see the signature of Maral Ceranoğlu and Mihran Tomasyan. Drawing on the strength of the accomplished history of the Çıplak Ayaklar dance company, the movement stands out as the unifying element of the event. Within this interdisciplinary structure, Esme Madra and Ozan Çelik, who accompany the ensemble as actors, make possible, through both their use of the body and their expressive power, a delivery that is natural and fluid, free of eclecticism, yet just as sincere. Utku Kara’s lighting design, meanwhile, creates an atmosphere that embraces this motion unfolding on stage.
Before moving on to the word dimension, if we look at the production’s dramaturgical approach, we see that, in contrast to the functionalist approach of modern dramaturgy, which does not accept the legitimacy of any sign on stage without assigning it a single, definite and rational meaning, it values polysemy, and even intuitive, associative and sensory meanings, with equal weight. This approach, which is said not to be as reckless and unconsidered an attitude as implied by the “anything goes” slogan of postmodern aesthetics rebelling against modern dramaturgy, or by the “why not” question it poses in response to modernism’s “why”, develops with a responsibility that has been thought through in every respect.
The word, approached through such a dramaturgical approach, is also an important component of the event Geçen Gün. The text written by Kerem Kurdoğlu revolves around two sensitive hearts seeing, recognizing and smiling at each other. They too suffer from the same affliction. They are trying to cope with the city and its rising values: boorishness, rudeness, uncanniness… Sometimes their paths cross. Sometimes they move along separate routes… Woven from words that merge with movement and sound, diverge and at times repeat, the text does not follow the conventional structure of a dramatic play text. It is built on a simple yet powerful mathematics that shows how storytelling, worn out from overuse in today’s productions, can also take entirely different forms. Although the two main subjects of the characterization cannot touch each other because of their sensitivities, they are able to smile while watching the view from a bench they sit on. That smile is a declaration that they are not alone, even if their paths are separate. That they have not been defeated by war, by the city… Goethe may be right, the world may be a hell for sensitive hearts, but art can turn a hell into a paradise with a single smile…
*This article was published in Mimesis Dergi on February 5, 2024.
Filiz Sızanlı and Mustafa Kaplan, the dancers of Taldans, bring their dance project ANDAN DAHA KISA back to audiences for the first time in four years on the evening of February 3 at Kundura Sahne.
Created by Filiz Sızanlı and Mustafa Kaplan, pioneers of contemporary dance in Türkiye and founders of Taldans, the dance project ANDAN DAHA KISA draws inspiration from the serialist movement in music.
Known to us for works such as “Dolap”, “Sek Sek”, “Dokuman”, “Solum”, “Graf” and, most recently, “Never Odd Or Even”, which had its Türkiye premiere at Kundura Sahne last year, the duo this time subjects its choreographic research, carried out using mathematical scores, sequences and repetitions, to the distinctive dynamics of the serialist movement.
In ANDAN DAHA KISA, the systematics of patterns such as modulation, accumulation and repetition echo across the familiar landscape of the fairy tale ‘’Little Red Riding Hood’’. Unlike in the tale, every character, place and situation is realigned without taking precedence over one another and without forming a hierarchical relationship with one another.
Seeking through their choreographies to understand the mathematics of nature and emotions by way of series and sequences, the duo this time turns its questions toward serialism, which they take as their source of inspiration:
Where can the sequences that serialism creates using qualities such as tone, rhythm and timbre carry images of the body and movement?
How does serialism’s approach, as reflected in music, literature, architecture and art, influence a choreographic structure?
How are the systematics of structures established, and how does creation take part in this process?
How does one move from one discipline to another using sequences and series?
Can these sequences serve as a tool in the transition from dance to video, or from music to dance?
Staged in 2020 at the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality City Theaters’ Üsküdar Kerem Yılmazer Stage and also featured in the program of İKSV’s 24th Istanbul Theater Festival, the work was able to reach its audience only online during the global pandemic.
As it returns to its audience for the first time in four years at Kundura Sahne, tickets for ANDAN DAHA KISA are available here.
ANDAN DAHA KISA
Dance, performance
2020, 60’, 13+
Concept, Choreography, Performance: Filiz Sızanlı, Mustafa Kaplan
Sound Design: Sair Sinan Kestelli
Lighting Design: Utku Kara
Object Design: Pınar Akkurt
Production: Taldans
Production Directors: Fırat Kuşçu, Maya Çelem
Conceptual Advisor: Enis Gümüş
We spoke with Kerem Kurdoğlu and Naz Erayda, the directors of “Geçen Gün”, Kundura Sahne’s first theater production.
Esra Ece Kuleci*
Geçen Gün, the first play produced by Kundura Sahne, which celebrated its fifth anniversary in 2023, met audiences in December. Written by Kerem Kurdoğlu and directed by him together with Naz Erayda, Geçen Gün tells an anxious love story between the city and two people. The play features music by Tophane Noise Band, founded in 2021, which gives performances on instruments made from urban waste, while Çıplak Ayaklar Stüdyosu serves as the play’s executive producer. The play presents dance, concert and performance to the audience in harmony on stage. Esme Madra and Ozan Çelik, meanwhile, accompany us through this story as the “two people”. We talked with the play’s directors, Kerem Kurdoğlu and Naz Erayda.
Naz Erayda: Kumpanya left its physical space with the decision to vacate the Monastery (İSM), but we, Kumpanya’s founders, continued our work, sometimes collaborating with theaters and artists whose founding purpose or work we felt close to, or with art collectives through which we felt we could express ourselves because of their modes of production, and for a long time now with educational institutions as well. We continue to create work on different platforms, across disciplines that are different from yet close to one another, on subjects that interest us. Kerem continued the kind of work he had done before and during the Kumpanya years after it closed; while he keeps writing and directing plays and screenplays and teaching courses on these subjects, he also continues to work as a post-production supervisor in film. The ones that first come to my mind are Ve Hep Birlikte Soldan Çıkarlar, staged at the State Theater; İstanbul’da Bir Dava, a musical adaptation of Kafka that he wrote and directed; and Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, which he directed. At Mehmet Birkiye’s request, he adapted Shakespeare and wrote the play III. Richard, Neden Yaptım? After Richard, he is now writing the second of a series of plays, again adapted from Shakespeare, which are intended to be worked on one after another as a trilogy.
As for me, while teaching courses titled Experimental Stage Design, Art Direction in Film, and Improvisation – Space Time Body at three different universities and leading workshops at various institutions, I continued to work as a production designer and art director for independent films. I served as editor-in-chief of Gist, an interdisciplinary contemporary performing arts magazine. At the same time, I continued making my own interdisciplinary works. Among them, some of the ones that excited me most are İstanbul by Naz, Antakya by Naz, Çizelge Oyun, Sansürcü, Ya Seni Rüyasında Bir Daha Hiç Görmezse, which I adapted and directed from three stories by Sevim Burak, and Beni Duyuyor musun?, Nurşen, Course, Hulahoop, Uzun Bir Yıl: Yürümek, Durmak, Ölmek Üzerine Bir Çalışma, Kesişmeler I and II, which were both liberating and shaped my outlook on collectivism and boundaries.
Kerem Kurdoğlu: Rather than an “accumulation” from then until now, we could say it is an idea whose seeds were planted back then and which has come to fruition today. In Kim O?, which we made in 1994 as Naz’s project, I had rewritten the words of ideas we drew from our work with the actors. For one of the exercises Naz gave, I wrote a piece told by two actors sharing it word by word, which began with these words: “The other day, I was walking down the street, and a police officer stopped me.” Naz liked that piece and decided to use it in Kim O?. I loved that scene, and the idea of expanding it into a stand-alone play was already in my mind back then. A true “spin-off”, to use TV series terminology. In fact, in 2005 we worked on a version of about 15–20 minutes with Kumpanya actors Bilge Arat and Cenk Telimen, but that work never turned into a production presented to an audience. Later, Filiz Sızanlı and Mustafa Kaplan asked me for a text they could use in one of their performances, and I gave them this text. They used part of it. And finally, in September 2022, when Mihran Tomasyan offered to make a work together with us, we suggested this text; they loved it, and the final journey began. At that point the text was only 15–20 minutes long. I rewrote it and brought it to its current form. Some sections from Kim O?, and even some of Naz’s staging ideas, are still used in the play. For example, the actors coming to the front of the stage and calmly looking at the audience for a long time. So we can say that Geçen Gün is the long-awaited realization of an idea from 30 years ago. A question I am often asked is: “It fits today so well. Did you update it while rewriting?” Frankly, the theme the play deals with didn’t require any effort to “update”. For example, I didn’t feel the need to make any changes to the dialogues we took from Kim O?. In fact, while rewriting, I deliberately chose to keep it “timeless”. Apart from a few details such as mobile phones, I don’t think there is anything in the text that couldn’t have existed 30 years ago.
N.E.: As Kerem said, about a year ago Mihran Tomasyan, one of the founders of the Çıplak Ayaklar Kumpanyası, invited us to watch a special presentation by Tophane Noise Band (TNB), of which he is also one of the founders and which was then still in the process of being formed. In their space in Tophane, one of the city’s distinctive neighborhoods, they had turned objects they had collected, the kind of things we come across almost every day in daily life, into sculptures that could produce sound. We were enchanted. The atmosphere created by the materials used and the sounds they produced reminded us of the work we did at Kumpanya, inside the Monastery in Tarlabaşı, and especially of our play Kim o? Our paths had crossed with Mihran way back then. We have been following each other’s work for about twenty-five years. This exciting encounter led to the production of our play, which we named Geçen Gün. After TNB’s special presentation, Mihran offered to make a work together. The first stages of the work flowed almost by themselves, through long and enjoyable meetings with Mihran Tomasyan, Serkan Aka, Ufuk Fakıoğlu and Selim Cizdan from TNB on many subjects such as the text, sound design, approach to movement, acting and space design. Kerem wrote the text in a short time. The production process continued with a laboratory work lasting a week to ten days, with acting contributions from our assistants Ahmet Mete Balyan and Zivan Arya Çelik. In fact, on the first day, before working hours, we set up the space at Çıplak Ayaklar Stüdyosu, using platforms of different heights and sound-producing objects that TNB might use in the performance. To better understand each other and the work we wanted to make, we continued our work sometimes through short conversations about our approach to movement and sound, and sometimes through improvisations based on these conversations. I would also like to acknowledge here the efforts of our assistants Basma Seiba and Ahmet Mete Balyan and our assistant director Ekin Deniz Görk in setting these improvisations. With Mihran and all the friends with whom we completed the project, there are so many common points, and a certain number of differences, in our approach to life and to many subjects and details, that these were reflected positively in the work we created together. The desire that almost all of us share to be free and sincere in matters of space, time, movement, sound and word, or to turn the familiar inside out, is what allowed us to create Geçen Gün together.
N.E.: Yes, we would very much like that too and are eagerly looking forward to it. The combination of the instruments Tophane Noise Band creates and the sounds they draw from them evokes very rich associations. The music they made for this play, somewhere between past and future, evokes people we seem to know very well and yet have never met, places we know very well or have never known, and familiar feelings. Their followers know this well, but let me say it here too: you might come across them sometimes at their own concerts at DasDas, sometimes at a ‘Büyük Ev Ablukada’ concert, sometimes accompanying a silent film, sometimes in an art gallery, and sometimes perhaps on the street in one of the city’s distinctive neighborhoods.
K.K.: For us, Beykoz Kundura is a very valuable institution that holds a unique place in this city’s memory. The fact that the site has been preserved through extremely careful work, without being damaged, and by making excellent use of the possibilities of contemporary architecture, makes it very special. The archiving work that has been done and the museum are an excellent example of the approach that should exist and that we have been longing for. For many years, it has also held an important place for the film industry as a film studio. In addition, the venue has a truly enchanting aesthetic beauty. When we were looking for a producer for this play, Mihran suggested Beykoz Kundura to us. As soon as he said it, we said, that’s it, that is the right place for this work. And indeed, the play blended perfectly with the space, as if it had been made for it. It should also be particularly emphasized that Beykoz Kundura and Buse Yıldırım, as producers, act not out of commercial concerns but with the aim of making works they truly find right and valuable. As you know, contemporary performing arts are, all over the world, a field that does not bring much commercial return but is valued for the development of culture and the arts. It is very valuable that there are institutions here that value and support what we do.
N.E.: That is exactly what we wanted to do; it is a very accurate observation. During the week-long laboratory work we carried out after the text was completed, we had established in broad strokes what Geçen Gün would be like. The bricks in the final section, the ramp and the steps, as well as the movement style in the play, are all ideas found in that first week a year ago. Of course, there were also some ideas we later dropped or used in modified form. It is also very important to us that movement, sound and word, and even objects, costumes and space, can transform into one another, and that while doing so we can establish genuine communication with the audience. Mihran and I know each other’s artistic tendencies well, but we were working with Esme and Ozan for the first time. Their self-discipline was so strong that they turned the challenging ideas of us directors, and of Mihran and Maral, who did the movement design, into creative results. Not only did they memorize a text that is so hard to memorize because of its fragmented structure, they also absorbed that text without giving up who they are. Both are actors who are as enjoyable to work with as they are disciplined and creative. Most of the time they even managed to cope with the fact that I am from another planet.
K.K.: In one of our first meetings with Mihran, while describing the structure of the performance we were aiming for, we dwelled with particular emphasis on these definitions: each element should be so strong on its own that if, for example, we removed movement and word from this performance, the remaining “thing” could be watched as an hour-long concert. Or if we removed music and word, the remaining “thing” should be worth watching as a dance performance. Likewise, if we removed the dance, a play with music should remain. We maintained the same approach to set and lighting design. We didn’t ask our lighting designer Utku Kara simply to light the scenes we perform correctly. We asked him to use light to create “tableaux”, each of which we would want to gaze at for a long time. In the same way, we treated the set changes as an important category of action worth watching within the movement design and the performance.
N.E.: Yes, I suppose one could say that. We usually do detailed work on the subjects and fields that occupy our minds, generally without the concern of reaching a goal. Sometimes these reach a result in a shorter time and turn into something watchable that people can witness. Sometimes they remain simply work that nourishes us and can, years later, at a time we never expected, turn into another work. The fact that we have both been teaching in these fields at various educational institutions for years also allows us to continue our research and keeps us lively. In those years I was doing things the way I do today, not with the aim of being innovative but because that is how my mind works. So it is something innate; the sources that nourish me seem to go through a process on their own and turn into works like these. The passion to reach a new balance by turning things inside out always continues. Something very positive happened in this project, too. My works usually consist of melancholic moments. In Geçen Gün, when this combined with Kerem’s sense of humor, it turned, with the influence of music and movement as well, into a multilayered depth.
K.K.: I think the expression Naz used, “not with the aim of being innovative but because that is how my mind works”, is very important. By putting ourselves in the audience’s place, we try to make works we would enjoy watching. We don’t make any extra effort specifically to be “different” or “innovative”.
N.E.: It really is becoming harder and harder to suggest anything on this subject. As the population grows, resources run out and becoming visible gets harder. In fact, simply surviving is gradually becoming almost impossible. Despite all this, could summoning the courage to keep going with passion, faith and persistence, without letting go of the work one wants to do, and being part of collective production while individual creativity continues, open up space? Could it help to think of making works produced within one’s own collectives, far from the center and outside the mainstream? Can methods different from the known methods, the ones we know, be developed? Can different methods through which you can express yourself be developed? It seems as if there is no other way. We need to create different forms of perception.
K.K.: That is a very difficult question to answer. But I would like to simplify life a little by answering from a single perspective that I find very important: I think it is very important not to make work in order to win the approval of others. We should make work according to our own taste and our own truths, for ourselves before anyone else. The culture of living focused on “more views” and “collecting likes”, brought about in recent years as we have started to live on our mobile phones, is the biggest obstacle to truly good and sincere work emerging. I find making work “according to audience approval” very harmful. Working “by putting yourself in the audience’s place” is, I think, the right perspective. The two are very different things. If we keep making works, according to our own tastes, that make us happy and that we are proud of, the continuity we create will surely build its own audience over time.
A city. And two people. Two people who constantly encounter each other, pass each other by, collide, but never truly see each other. Two people against the world. They move through the city. They try not to be crushed. They try to cope with the city. Everyone is against them; they are on their own. One moment they are eighty, the next eighteen. One moment they are the victims, the next they are gnawed by guilt.
We know them. And they know us. The city changes. The city keeps drawing different routes. The city pushes them around. Other people, at one with the city, sweep them along. At every moment they are under a different threat. Sounds envelop them all. Now a disturbing cacophony, now an enchanting calm. Now a tangle of noise, now music.
But in fact, they are the city, and they are the other people too. That is, there is no city other than themselves, and no other people other than themselves. All that exists is them. Hundreds, thousands of themselves. This is an anxious love story.
(From the press release)
*This interview was published on Argonotlar.com on January 26, 2024.
For those curious about how Sümerbank’s iconic logo came to be, we have selected this piece for you from the Kundura Hafıza archive…
Nahit Katlan*
Sümerbank’s identifying marks, encompassing all distinctive identifying symbols such as emblems, monograms, abbreviations, trademarks and brands, have changed over time under the influence of commercial development and legal regulations, and above all according to need.
In the Founding Law No. 2262, the name Sümerbank was originally specified as two words: SÜMER BANK… Although grammatically correct, in practical use this was inevitably simplified and merged, and the two words SÜMER BANK became the single word SÜMERBANK. This is something not considered unusual in bank names, and is quite often created deliberately.
To meet the need for a short form, Sümerbank was, in the early days and frequently thereafter, written as SB, using the first letters of the words Sümer and Bank without periods between them, and it still is. No decision or directive formalizing this usage has been found. It appears that the practice is simply a habit born of necessity and an anonymous, collective adoption.
Apart from its conventional use with the letters side by side, the abbreviation SB was in time worked into the shape of a key, a symbol, and this too was readily embraced. According to official records, the appearance of the Key SB can be traced back to around 1943. (1) [1]It appears that this monogram was used even earlier, but why and how it first emerged, and by whom it was drawn, launched and adopted, has not yet been learned even from specialized sources and is not known with any reliable certainty.
In 1943, the key-shaped SB together with the word SÜMER alone was put forward for registration as a trademark, in order to promote Sümerbank products in domestic and foreign markets and to prevent imitation, and these marks (figures 1 and 2) were registered by the Ministry of Economy under the numbers 7308 and 7309 for a period of 15 years[2] from July 9, 1943.
Without initially being standardized to specific dimensions, these marks were circulated to the Sümerbank organization as trademarks to be used on products, with circular No. 79 in October 1943.
Council of Ministers Decree No. 4/8262, published in the Official Gazette on December 18, 1956, took up the matter that Sümerbank had circulated in 1943, expanded and generalized it, and in short made it mandatory, from March 1, 1957, for a mark registered by the manufacturer to be placed on agricultural produce obtained without industrial processing, handicrafts and small craft products. In line with this decree, and given that most Sümerbank institutions and factories had a registered brand or trademark, it was deemed beneficial to redefine the long-used Key SB mark as a standard within specific dimensions and to use it throughout the entire Sümerbank organization. The shape standard prepared to this end (Figure 3) was put into effect as of March 1, 1957, and the use of this standardized Key SB as a uniform mark on products, no doubt also prompted by the approaching expiry of the validity periods of the marks registered under numbers 7308 and 7309, was found appropriate by the General Directorate and approved and resolved by the Board of Directors on 1.3.1957 under No. 302.
[1] Records of the Sümerbank Directorate of Planning and Organization.
[2] Article 16 of the latest and new “Trademarks Law”, adopted on 3.3.1965 under No. 551, published on 12.3.1965 and entering into force on 12.6.1965, reduced the period of validity of trademark rights from the date of registration from 15 years to 10 years.
Following the registration requirement introduced by the Council of Ministers decree, the Key SB mark in its standard form was recorded in the name of Sümerbank for a period of 15 years from 28.02.1957 by the Ministry of Justice under date 16.3.1957 and No. 14893, and registered by the Ministry of Economy and Trade under No. 17635.
With directive No. 5666, issued to the entire organization at the beginning of 1957, it was requested that the standardized Key SB be entered into the inventory records as the ‘Shape Standard’, and it was stated that the sign could also be used as a brand by writing the names of the institutions or factories beneath it. In addition, shortly afterwards, at the end of March 1957, a new circular, No. 127, was issued with the shape standard attached, to ensure uniform usage throughout the organization.
Apart from this generalized emblem and mark, there are also various special trademarks, brands and signs, mostly prepared by the institutions and factories with the approval of the General Directorate, which have been registered and remain in use.
In order to establish a coordinating framework within the organization on this matter, a ‘Sümerbank Trademark Regulation’ was drawn up from mid-1945 onward, with changes made to it from time to time. The records show that correspondence and work on the draft were still going on as late as around 1949. However, the absence of any such regulation among those currently in force indicates that the draft was never given its final form and official status. When the need makes itself felt, the subject will no doubt be taken up again with new work.
Regarding monograms, apart from work within Sümerbank, some proposals have also emerged for identifying Sümerbank in brief. For example, in the book ‘State Organization and Its Duties’, prepared at the end of 1962 by the ‘Presidency of the Board of Directors of the Central Government Organization Research Project’, ‘SÜMB’ was identified and proposed for Sümerbank in the section on monograms; however, Sümerbank did not find this view appropriate and showed its wish, insistence and determination to continue the established monogram ‘SB and/or Key SB’.
Today, with its specific standard dimensions, the key-shaped SB sign has been retained and recognized as Sümerbank’s general official emblem, symbol, brand, trademark and abbreviated monogram; it serves as an identifier and is, for now, sufficient.
Beyond this general situation, certain abbreviations are also seen in Sümerbank communications, particularly in telegraph addresses, for the sake of convenience. Initially ‘SÜMERUM’ and today ‘SÜMERBANK’ are the abbreviated monograms that have been and are used for telegraph addresses. In this regard, institutions and factories have also, mostly independently, chosen and continue to use their own special and varied abbreviations. The view is that the ‘Communications Affairs Regulation’, which was previously prepared but could not be registered, and on which drafting work has begun again, may well become a useful and helpful document for regulating identifying marks, encompassing these matters as well.
Time will tell what kind of development today’s ‘SÜMERBANK’ and ‘Key SB’ monograms will follow.
“The greatest strength of this extraordinary performance, built from a very solid text, acting, dance and sound, is the way different disciplines come together in flawless harmony to achieve a unique wholeness. In this respect, it is one of the leading theater events of the year, perhaps even the most important.”
Erdoğan Mitrani*
I first met writer, director, actor and dramaturg Kerem Kurdoğlu, and Naz Erayda, who designed the sets and costumes for almost all of his plays, co-created and co-directed some of them, and adapted and staged others on her own, in the early 1990s through Kumpanya, which they founded in a hall of the old monastery on Tarlabaşı Boulevard that had been opened to various companies. Thirty years ago, I thought that the breathtaking ‘Fayton Soruşturması’, which I watched with admiration, was far ahead of its time, the theater of the future. With ‘Canlanan Mekân’(1994), ‘Kim O’ (1995), ‘Haritadan Naklen Yayın’ (1996), ‘Everest My Lord’ (1997), ‘Vınnlamanın Binbir Yolu’ (1998), ‘Sahte Kimlikler 5’ (2000) and ‘Yine Ne Oldu’ (2002), the company went on to create unique, pioneering works that turned ways of seeing and perceiving inside out.
When the venue closed in 2006, Kumpanya took a break from theater for a while. Alongside a successful career as head of the post-production studio ABT and as a visual effects and post-production supervisor, Kerem Kurdoğlu also worked as a lecturer at Bilgi University. Naz Erayda, by then his wife, became one of the leading art directors of Turkish cinema, taught at many universities and led workshops. But their passion for theater never let go of either of them.
In 2008, Kurdoğlu rewrote Kafka’s The Trial, not as “Kafkaesque” in the familiar sense, but as the story of a fall from the heights to rock bottom, wrapped in a glossy world of entertainment, and directed it under the title ‘İstanbul’da Bir Dava’. This tremendously striking interpretation, in which music, choreography and visuals came to the fore, was, despite its unexpected style, a work remarkably faithful to the essence of the text.
In late 2019, Kurdoğlu reunited with friends with whom he had made theater at Boğaziçi University in the 1980s and brought a contemporary and exciting interpretation to ‘The Bald Soprano’.
The period of staying away from theater was now over; right after the pandemic, Kurdoğlu set out to write a trilogy interpreting famous Shakespeare characters through the eyes of our time. The first play of the trilogy, made up of solo plays, ‘III. Richard: Niçin Yaptım’, which premiered at the 26th Theater Festival, was a mischievous black comedy in which Richard argues that if there is a goal one is passionately devoted to, there is nothing wrong with resorting to evil for its sake, and that evil can, and indeed should, be used shamelessly. Directed by Mehmet Birkiye, the play won Hakan Gerçek the Best Actor award at the Afife Jale Awards. While we eagerly await the other two plays of the trilogy, this time Kundura Sahne has brought Naz Erayda and Kerem Kurdoğlu together again on the same project with its first production, ‘Geçen Gün’.
The subject of this article is ‘Geçen Gün’, the hybrid performance written by Kurdoğlu and co-directed with Erayda. The purpose of such a long introduction is to remind readers, and to inform those who do not know, that the true pioneer who paved the way, with the Renaissance they launched in Istanbul 15–16 years ago, for all the young theater makers who still continue to create the finest theater, was Kerem and Naz’s Kumpanya.
The many intertwined stories of a city and two people, which are in fact all one and the same story
‘Geçen Gün’ is a work that breaks the familiar molds of theater, conveys its narrative in different styles and layers, and blends the performance of two actors with a surprising music and sound arrangement and a choreographic movement design close to dance theater.
Kerem Kurdoğlu and Serkan Aka have successfully created Istanbul, with its descents, ascents, slopes, and widening and narrowing roads, on a bare stage using two metal staircases and two long, narrow metal platforms whose positions and distances the team constantly changes. The voice of Istanbul, perhaps the most important character in the play, which envelops the actors, falls and rises, and never falls silent even when it almost turns into silence, is brought into being by Tophane Noise Band, positioned in the background. Made up of Selim Cizdan, Serkan Aka, Ufuk Fakıoğlu and Mihran Tomasyan, the collective makes a unique kind of ‘music’ with instruments built from materials it has found, or tirelessly stored, among the waste of Tophane in particular and the city in general, turning the sound of the city into a ‘noise symphony’.
Esme Madra and Ozan Çelik share the tremendously poetic text between them, voicing it at times as solos, at times as a canon in which one begins and the other completes, and at times as a chorus; sometimes they move, sometimes they speak while still, and sometimes a wordless series of movements interrupts the flow of the text. The movement design by Maral Ceranoğlu and Mihran Tomasyan of executive producer Çıplak Ayaklar Stüdyosu orchestrates the motions of both the two actors and the city they struggle to cope with. Entering the stage as a ‘master of ceremonies’ as the play begins, Tomasyan also turns the sound team into the crowds of the city.
Let me also remind readers that the Çıplak Ayaklar Kumpanyası, founded in 2003, created its own language and made dance theater of the finest kind before the genre even had a name, bringing many amateur and professional dancers into the field.
The greatest strength of this extraordinary performance, built from a very solid text, acting, dance and sound, is the way different disciplines come together in flawless harmony to achieve a unique wholeness. In this respect, it is one of the leading theater events of the year, perhaps even the most important. At Kundura Sahne on January 13, 14, 27 and 28 and throughout the season. Not to be missed.
*This article was published in the January 10, 2024 issue of the Şalom newspaper.
At Beykoz Kundura, 2023 was a year packed with plays, dance, music and film. Here is a look back at everything that happened at Kundura Sahne and Kundura Sinema over the course of the year…
GEÇEN GÜN, a Kundura Sahne production, premiered on December 8. Co-directed by Naz Erayda and Kerem Kurdoğlu, the play was greeted with warm applause from the audience.
Beykoz Kundura’s cinema, Kundura Sinema, enchanting with its restoration, celebrated its 5th anniversary this year with restored classics. First opening its doors in 2018 and becoming one of Istanbul’s most beloved movie theaters thanks to its original content and curated programs, Kundura Sinema brought together a special selection of films from its first-year program. In the program titled “The Memory of Kundura Sinema”, a rich and colorful selection of films spanning the 1940s to the 2010s met Istanbul audiences in restored prints. >>>WATCH
Kundura Sahne continued to bring the most talked-about projects from international stages to Istanbul’s theatergoers.
“Conference of the Absent” by the art collective Rimini Protokoll, which has sparked debate on stages around the world with award-winning projects that push the boundaries of theater through technology, came to Kundura Sahne for its Türkiye premiere on March 31. >>>WATCH
Swiss director, artist and curator Stefan Kaegi, who was in Türkiye for the performance of “Conference of the Absent”, also led a workshop at Beykoz Kundura, sharing with participants the digital applications he developed for the performance and innovative formats designed for the ‘participating audience’. >>>WATCH
Hailed as the new inventors of documentary theater, Brussels-based artists Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere brought their performance “Pleasant Island” (Cennet Ada), performed without speaking a single word and entirely through a smartphone, to Kundura Sahne on May 10 for its first and only showing in Türkiye. >>>WATCH
“Never Odd Or Even”, which brings together on the same stage Filiz Sızanlı and Mustafa Kaplan, whom we know well from Taldans, the company they founded in 2003, and the Portuguese artist duo Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz, who have been working together since 2006, had its Türkiye premiere at Kundura Sahne on the evening of Friday, November 3. >>>WATCH
A Summer Night Festival brought film and music together on the shores of the Bosphorus for the seventh time.
Inviting audiences to a unique viewing experience on the shores of the Bosphorus and under the stars, A Summer Night Festival treated Istanbulites to open-air film and music for 9 days in August. This year, the festival’s Restored Classics program, inspired by the union of film and music, focused on the Oscar- and Grammy-winning Italian composer Nino Rota, bringing back to audiences, in restored prints, the classics he scored: “La Dolce Vita” (1960), “8½” (1963), “Purple Noon” (Plein Soleil, 1960), “The Godfather” (1972) and “The Godfather Part II” (1974). In the Silent Film with Live Music program, which welcomed master musicians in front of the screen, circus-themed films from 100 years ago were shown, accompanied by the live performances of Frank Bockius from Germany and Korhan Futacı, Islandman and Okay Temiz from Türkiye.
>>>WATCH
One of this year’s guests at A Summer Night Festival was the German silent film virtuoso and percussionist Frank Bockius. One of the leading accompanists in the world of silent film, the artist led a workshop as part of the festival, teaching musicians from Türkiye the finer points of making music for silent film. The musicians who took part in the workshop, aimed at young musicians interested in silent cinema and jazz professionals skilled in improvisation techniques, also performed alongside Frank Bockius to accompany the “Circus Films” screening at the festival.
Kundura DocLab welcomed documentary film and theater directors in its first edition. Launched under the umbrella of KunduraLab, the laboratory program Beykoz Kundura founded in 2021 to create opportunities for discussion and production across different disciplines, Kundura DocLab brought together the practices of cinema and theater, offering participants the chance to carry out joint research for a week with a contemporary, interdisciplinary approach.
>>>WATCH
In Türkiye, the traditional Month of European Film celebrations took place this year at Kundura Sinema. In the Month of European Film program, which we organized in partnership with the European Film Academy and Creative Europe Media and with the support of the Institut Français İstanbul, 5 films from among the unforgettable works of French cinema were screened.
>>>WATCH
Kundura Sahne hosted a special launch concert for the vinyl release of “The ORTF Recordings PARIS 1971”, one of the most important albums in jazz history. Regarded as one of the most successful records by the Don Cherry Trio, made up of American jazz musician Don Cherry, master percussionist Okay Temiz and South African bassist Johnny Dyani, and recorded in 1971 at the famous ORTF studios in Paris, the album’s tracks came to life once again, this time through the music project Okay Temiz plays Don Cherry . With Okay Temiz on drums, Harald Svensson on piano, Ozan Musluoğlu on bass, Tomi Temiz on keyboards and Can Ömer Uygan on trumpet, the group brought to life in Istanbul, 52 years later, the album that was pressed in a limited edition in October on the Caz Plak label and quickly sold out.
>>>WATCH
Beykoz Kundura celebrated International Dance Day on April 29 with a film and talk program titled “For the Love of Dance: Pina Bausch” , paying tribute to the legendary dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch, whom we lost 14 years ago. As part of the program, prepared in partnership by Kundura Sahne and Kundura Sinema, audiences saw the films “One Day Pina Asked…” , directed by Chantal Akerman in 1983, and the 2022 German production “Dancing Pina”.
>>>WATCH
The program also included a talk titled “Understanding and Narrating Pina” at Kundura Sinema. Moderated by film writer Ekrem Buğra Büte, the talk featured dance artist and choreographer Leyla Postalcıoğlu and film writer and curator Müge Turan, and together we discussed the magic of Pina Bausch on screen and on stage.
One of the program’s surprises was bringing to life, with all the participants on the waterfront of Beykoz Kundura, the Nelken Line, the dance sequence that is as famous as Pina Bausch herself.
The final event of the year, Domestic Goods Week at Kundura, brought together masterful and creative names from the local stage in performances and talks. Inspired by the memory of the Sümerbank Leather and Shoe Industry Institution, which became the foremost symbol of industrialization and domestic production in the history of the Republic, the Domestic Goods Week at Kundura program focused this year on local theater and performance productions. The program, which featured an open rehearsal of the project Filiz Sızanlı and Mustafa Kaplan developed at Beykoz Kundura, also included a talk titled “Local Content, New Form”, looking at local stage productions from past to present. Moderated by Ayşe Draz and Özlem Hemiş, the talk featured speakers Dikmen Gürün, Filiz Sızanlı, Gülhan Kadim, Kerem Kurdoğlu, Melih Kıraç, Mustafa Kaplan, Naz Erayda and S. Buse Yıldırım.
>>>WATCH
