The Real Gala

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The Real Gala is a comedy for two staged by Tiyatrotem. Mrs. Müesser and Mr. Lütfi who are not performers come to the stage for the first time to tell their life story. They can not start to tell their own stories since they are so excited about being on stage. What they try to tell about their life is based on third-page tragicomic news and today’s rated and popular television programs. Are they real or fake? When it comes to the pathetic stories, their presence on stage begins to change and they make the audience believe what they tell through the joyful and painful stories. However, in the end, they confess that none of them belongs to their own.
The Real Gala combines the traditional storytelling forms with the questions of representation and theatricality and it concerns the relations between the self and role, reality and fiction, telling and performing, authenticity and insincerity.

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Truth, A Day For Sure

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Truth, A Day For Sure is the story of a journey constructed with metaphors in search of a child’s letter to his mother. The action takes in a distant fairy tale country which will turn into a dystopia, where the sun is forbidden and the truth is covered. When the colorful world of childhood is destroyed by the violence, pressure, and silencing mechanism, the story begins to carry the language of mices and crows. However, by the metaphors of sunflowers, it also raises hopes that truth will reveal in any case, even though the sun is forbidden in this ‘distance’ country. Staged by D22, the performance contains indirect references to the current political and social conflicted atmosphere in Turkey ranging from censorship, the restriction of ‘freedom of thought’ to the civil deaths and arrested people for criticizing the government as well as it questions the nature of the concept of truth itself. This play won the 25 Cevdet Kudret Literature Prizes in field of best drama in 2017.

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The Fox Hunt

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A story of Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar , the founder of Qajar dynasty in 18th century and how historical and social climate of the time has formed his tragic life and turned him to a brutal king. The Eunuch monarch has paradoxical persona that has fears and compassion, while he acts grotesque with his statuesque figure he commits cruel crimes and kills his brothers. The setting of the play is in a mortuary that creates surreal atmosphere, where the egotist antihero is schemes and sends all the characters to their deaths but at last he is also end up dead.

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Afra or Another Passes

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Afra is a teacher from a working class family with a retired mother that used to serve in the house of a Qajar princess, while her father, an official clerk has passed away , Afra tries to makes ends meet by tutoring old Qajar princess’s son but the princess treated her badly scheming his dim wit son marrying Afra but her offer is rejected by Afra that claims she has a suitor as a pretext.
The conflict with the bourgeoisie and working class rises when the princess accuses Afra of stealing so she would marry her son to avoid her reputation destroyed but again she refuses, the other characters in working class join the opposing voices against Afra and drag her to police station for persecution since she is no longer belongs to her own class either.
Meanwhile a police officer and a real estate audit investigate the events and proves Afra’s innocence by the end the story is being read in a newspaper by a story teller that decides to change it and claim he is the imaginary suitor to create a happy ending.

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Writing in the Dark

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A group of friends who are journalists are plan a holiday to the north of the country, but each one starts to debate whether it’s good to travel, that eventually leads to a vote and signifies the lack of a common goal among these friends. Nima is a photo journalist who has been arrested for documenting a protest, and being questioned by an interrogator.

In another timeline, Nima and his journalist friends are again on holiday in Germany, discussing the possible call for asylum, but only one decides to become a refugee. It appears that Nima is no longer in the interrogation room suggesting he is dead, while his friends seated separately on chairs watch the blindfolded being investigated by a young interrogator.

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Born in 1361

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Born in 1361 portrays the life of a girl born in 1982 (the Iranian year 1361) through ages of 6, 13, 22, and 28 until her death. The play is a monologue in several episodes describing the sociopolitical challenges in Iran that affected the life of Nava and her generation. The play starts from the viewpoint of a fetus in her mother’s womb, describing how it has conceived to her still born twin sister and being born under the air raids during the Iran-Iraq war. Nava continues to grow to a young girl, discovering social contrasts in her life, and then witnessing limitations of the society and the sociopolitical changes of the 90s, adulthood and marriage, facing the post-election events in the 2009 that eventually leads her to illegal immigrate by boat and being drowned. The first production of Born in 1361 was performed with an all-female cast. Each actress portrayed a different episode from the life of the female character.

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Autopsy

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‘Autopsy’ begins with a disturbing scene in which actors emerge one by one from their shrouds (white cloths covering their bodies), improvise dialogues, and submerge back into their dark and isolated space. Actors randomly involve the audience in their improvisations by using symbolic props that include white cloth and shroud, a belt and a red lipstick. The play displays the challenges of the transgender community that resonate in an episode about a trans person’s marriage to a cis woman due to pressure from society. 

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Barefoot, Naked, Heart in His Hand

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‘Barefoot, Naked, Heart in His Hand’ is based on a tragic incident that happened in Germany in 1993. A group of young neo-Nazi men set the apartment of a Turkish immigrant family on fire. In the fire, five members of the family perish, and the father and a little son survive. The play is narrated from the point of view of Ali, the father of the family, who survived the fire but stays in a mental hospital. To turn this catastrophe into a play, instead of writing a drama full of pity and tears, Jalali chooses the framework of tragicomedy which grants a dynamic rhythm to the monologue, that, alongside the alienation effect produced, makes the audience experience the bitterness and ugliness of the misfortune with an alert mind. Compactness is another characteristic of Jalali’s style which affects all parts of the play including the narrative, acting, stage design, and music. Choosing the form of monologue performed only by a single actor is evidence of this, which results in the play’s richness and complexity. ‘Barefoot, Naked, Heart in His Hand’ is compact but rich, simple but complicated, and comic but tragic.

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Launcher 5

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Launcher 5 is a hard-hitting report of the aftermath of three mysterious murders that have taken place at a military garrison’s launcher number 5. The play takes place in the inspection office of a garrison, where the inspector performs a long and complicated process of interrogation to discover the culprit. Launcher 5 pioneers the use of foregrounding a sexual crime committed in garrisons, which nobody dares refer to publicly. Military service is generally celebrated as a holy symbol that manifests young men’s duty to their country, but Launcher 5 desacralizes it and implies an urgent need for reevaluation and reform. Launcher 5 presents military service as imprisonment that can cause severe psychological issues in young men. However, the small world of the garrison can be seen as a metaphor for a social system in which too much repression is destructive rather than constructive. It can kill people’s spirits, resulting in outbursts of crime and violence. Launcher 5 gives a straightforward picture of reality and does not have any reservations against speaking the truth. This genuine honesty, along with brilliant acting, an outstanding script containing an intelligent mixture of tears, laughs, mystery, and violence, causes the spectators to trust the play and enjoy it.

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Handala

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Handala is a play that I wrote based on the cartoons of Naji Al-Ali. I am inspired by his work throughout the years before his assassination in London in 1987, and the life that his cartoons still have after his death. As
a writer, I also identify with the symbol of Handala, as it represents the continuation of struggle and resistance against the illegal Occupation. I call active, unarmed resistance “beautiful resistance,” and that is what Naji Al-Ali engaged in: beautiful resistance. I felt it was important to adapt his cartoons for the stage because they are still very relevant. There is so much false history that works to wash the truth of our memories away. Naji Al-Ali, the artist, is an important role model for the continuing commitment to human rights and values. Al-Ali’s creation, Handala, which is often humorous, represents the guardian of these same rights and values. I think that the cartoons of Handala are an intelligent and anguished cry against all the compromises and degradation of our values and rights. Handala’s spirit creates space for crushed people to speak, and to challenge the politicians and merchants of rights and values. Handala is also a vehicle through which we can reclaim our true histories.

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