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Director, Set Designer M. Nurullah TUNCER
Translator Bilge EMIN
Costume Designer Nihal KAPLANGI
Dramaturge Dogan KORKMAZ
Music Nedim YILDIZ
Choreographer Handan ÖZER
Lighting Design Fatih M. HAROGLU
Stage Effects Ersin AŞAR
Assistant Director Melahat ABBASOVA
Assistants Pinar AYGÜN, Derya ÇETINEL
Premiere:
December 16th 2009 |
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IGRAJU |
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Actor, The Suicidal Man, Brother of The Suicidal Man |
Bora SEÇKIN |
Actor, Captain, Businessman, Psychiatrist, Lawyer |
Serhat Mustafa KILIÇ |
Glumac, Fisherman |
Ibrahim CAN |
Actress, Woman |
Bennu YILDIRIMLAR |
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| CITY THEATRE - ISTANBUL (Turkey) |
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From “DAR-UL-BEDAYI” to Istanbul Municipal Theatre (IMT)
Cemil Topuzlu Pasha (1868 – 1958), one of the most successful mayors of Istanbul, established the “Darülbedayi-i Osmani” (The Ottoman House of Beauty) in 1914 – thus founding the current ‘City Theatre’ – Istanbul Municipal Theatre. André Antoine, a famous French actor, was appointed as the artistic director of this institution, which was established for educational purposes. However, shortly after Antoine had returned to France, due to the outbreak of WWI and because the Ottoman Empire was on the opposing side to France, the institution “wobbled” for a while. Then it recovered thanks to the efforts of Raşit Riza (Samato). At the time of Antoine’s management, students entered the school by taking an examination, and Ottoman administrators and educators were in charge of the “The House of Beauty”.
The enthusiasts who passed those exams became important figures of Turkish theatre and cinema in the following years. Amonst them are: Muhsin Ertugrul, Halit Fahri Ozansoy, Behzat Butak, Ali Naci Karacan, Peyami Safa, Emin Belig Belli, Celal Sahir, Eliza Binemeciyan, Ahmet Muvahhit, I. Galip Arcan, Raşit Riza, and Fikret Şadi.
The works made under the name of “Rehearsal Theatre” (Tatbikat Sahnesi) at the rented “Letafet Apartment” located in the Şehzadebaşi district of Istanbul continued at the Tepebaşi Theatre. The Tepebaşi Stage became the symbol of our theatre for many years but was abandoned for technical reasons in 1970. It also served as the administrative centre for many years. Beside the Tepebaşi Theatre, the Dar-ul-Bedayi, which evolved from being a school showcase “Çürük Temel” in 1916 into a professional theatre community, opened its curtains on new stages for various reasons and has developed in different districts of the city. The Şehzadepaşa Ferah Theatre, Kadiköy Apollon Theatre, Kadiköy Süreyya Cinema, Kadiköy of Public Education Centre Hall, Beyoglu Odeon, French and New Comedy Theatre, Aksaray Turkish Hearth, and Rumeli Fortress City Theatre are some of the theatre buildings where our city theatre has staged plays in Istanbul. The first works of many playwrights were staged at Istanbul Municipal Theatre for the first time and many new playwrights were introduced to Turkish audiences through the Municipal Theatre. The Darülbedayi, which was officially affiliated with the Istanbul Municipality in 1931, was renamed as Istanbul Municipal Theater (IMT) in 1934. The first children's theatre was set up at IMT in 1935. This period also became a period during which children’s plays were regularly and continuously staged. Especially, Ferif Egemen’s initiatives in this field added historical characteristics to our children’s theatre. The House of Beauty started the tradition of publishing a theatre journal in Turkey. The journal was called “Temaşa” and had a circulation of only twenty-five copies between the years 1918-1920. The magazine, which is one of the world’s long-term published magazines and which has since been renamed as “Darülbedayi, Türk Tiyatrosu (Turkish Theater) and Şehir Tiyatrosu (The Municipal Theatre)” has been published periodically since 1930. The management of the Municipal Theatre, when taking into consideration the changes in Turkish Theatre in recent years, and a broad repertoire of local and foreign authors, has opened its curtains to audiences in Istanbul as well as theatre lovers in other Turkish cities through tours. Also, it presents plays to audiences by inviting international directors and theater actors to Turkey. Today, the Municipal Theatre, which has six stages in five theatre buildings accomodates about two thousands spectators each day. These are as follows: Harbiye Muhsin Ertugrul Theatre, Kadiköy Haldun Taner Theatre, Fatih Reşat Nuri Theatre, Üsküdar Musahipzade Celal Theatre, Üsküdar Kerem Yilmazer Theatre, Kagithane Sadabad Theatre, Ümraniye Theatre, and Gaziosmanpaşa Theatre. |
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P E R F O R M A N C E...... |
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| THE HEALTH REPORT OF OUR TIME |
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A middle-aged man comes to the bridge, takes off his coat, prepares to jump. Soon he is confronted with an organised group of people who have an assignment to stop suicides...
Kovačević possesses an inexhaustible comediographic invention, which helps him never to betray the golden rule that is not switched off above the writing desk of a comediographer even at night: always to surprise viewers (...) Kovačević’s comedies sometimes look like a dynamite is packed into them. At the same time, Kovačević does not miss to write the addresses to which he sends his dynamite packets legibly and clearly.
While reading those comedies for the third or fourth time, we don’t laugh as if we were watching Nušić anymore, but as if we were watching Beckett...
 Ljubomir SIMOVIĆ
General Rehearsal for suicide... in a specific and direct literary manner, with the help of a sub-textual humorous and satirical tone, with direct grotesque and hyperbolic situations and sights, systematically developing them from one scene to the next, enlarging his comediographic tension, he talks about a complex and contradictory morals and deviated identity of today’s man and our society, burdened by uncertainty and different challenges of the existential moment in which they exist...
Affirming once again, and on the territory of the contemporary Belgrade finding the drama of the absurd and grotesque in which the person of today lives, in General Rehearsal for Suicide Kovačević saw our reality as a multiply interwoven play of different life and literary genres – as a drama within a drama, a tragedy within a comedy, a satire within grotesque, a farce within a tragedy. His drama is in fact a symbolic tragicomedy of today’s time, which shows with the multiplied, voluntary or forced roles carried by its protagonists to what degree of defence mechanisms a man is forced to descend in order to survive in the tragedy of the absurd and agression whose helpless witness he is. That’s why General Rehearsal for Suicide, according to its complexity and semantic depth, can be considered, as the author himself suggests, his best drama written thus far.
From the book Dušan Kovačević, General Rehearsal for Suicide, SKZ Beograd
You will be as successful as well as you can lie
In one interview by Branko Čečen of Dušan Kovačević in Wine Style, the writer says the following: “The time we live in can be described as ‘legal plunder’ and ‘legal robbery.’ If a man knows how to lie well, all the doors are open to him. That state is the reason I wrote the play. I think the time we live in is completely fake. And what I am interested in is whether the thieves will be caught...”
In the fate of Serbs, tragedy and comedy have always gone together. And for that reason, in his plays Kovačević mainly uses tragicomical elements... Humour is engrained into the Serbain lifestyle; since they have always warred throughout their history, they have chosen humour as a weapon to survive.
A continuous increase in the number of suicides in Turkey, for which one of the main causes is economic crisis, makes this play close to our viewer. In the country we live in there is more and more people who kill themselves because of financial troubles. Certainly there are those who try to talk people out of suicide, but does that offer a different solution to people or does it invite them to be a part of the system? That’s the question. The writer offers ’theatre’ as an answer...
Bilge EMIN, translator of the play
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S E L E C T O R ' S...R E P O R T...... |
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The reading of General Rehearsal for Suicide by the director Nurullah
Tuncer is significantly different from the directorial interpretation by
Dušan Kovačević – the first performance of this text in the Belgrade
Zvezdara Theatre. The Istanbul play is characterised by a particular
visual elegance, a simple, yet effective lyricism created by an exciting
combination of a minimal set design, use of videos, subtle choreography,
sensual music. Flies and lights are the basic elements of the set design,
there is a large canvas in the background where lyrical, tender sequences
of night seascapes are shown, as well as different associative drawings,
which all contributes to a particular excitement of the atmosphere. This
kind of stage concept is a rich source of interesting stage solutions,
and it is deeply integrated into the meaning of the plot which, among
other things, problematises the relationship between theatre and life.
Kovačević’s tragicomic view of the man’s effort to survive in the system
that is breaking him is written in a lyrical, artistically potent manner, offering
a different, more lyrical view of the latest text by this writer
Ana TASIĆ |
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M. NURULLAH TUNCER
Completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Mimar Sinan Univervisity at the Department of theatre set and costume design.
From 1985 to 2002, he worked as a lecturer at the Department of stage and visual arts of the same university, and from 1985 as an artist in the Municipal theatres of the Istanbul parliament. He created close to a hundred projects for the set, costume and light. From 1987 he has been painting oil on canvas. He had two exhibitions in Istanbul.
Set designs (selection): Ilhami Emin–Jordan Plevnesh, Black Feather, d. Vlado Cvetanovski, Turskish Theatre Skoplje; Molier, Tartuffe, d. Rahim Burhan, Kosovo State Theatre; M. Selimović, Fortress, d. Nebojša Bradić, Kruševac Theatre / Belgrade Drama Theatre; G. Puccini, La Boheme, d. Sulejman Kupusović, Sarajevo State Opera and Theatre; Franz Lehar, Merry Widow, d. Stephanie Jamnickz, Croatian National Theatre.
Director: M. Selimović, Death and the Dervish, Kocaeli Municipal Theatres (2009); Ozen Jula, A Place in the Middle of the Earth, Bosnian State Theatre Zenica; Hristo Boichev, Orchestra on Titanic, Theatre troupe 'Qatar' (2007); Mehmet Baydur, The Player’s Ochra with Minced Meat, Bosnian State Theatre Zenica (2006); Daha Al Rahbi, The Model, Sirian State Theatre (2006).
He is the recipient of national and international theatre prizes. The plays he has directed participated in many international theatre festivals. |
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This play contains everything said about the man standing on ‘the edge of time’: love, hate, spite, repulsion, lust etc. The man fighting with all of this is at the same time helpless in front of modernity. When he reaches the very center of a person, that helplessnes takes him to a social blind alley and a check-mate. Just as it is impossible for a person as a whole to free himself from that cycle, by ‘losing’ he is forced to pay the price. The play talks about the process of the fall of Yugoslavia in the hopeless situation of a man who is committing suicide, and about pain, lack of solution, helplessness that remain after the country has fallen apart. The state of the person who has stayed with out an arm, a leg, an eye is the same as the state of Yugoslavia. When it’s too late, what is dissolved is not sufficient to be collected into a whole...
The work done is connected to a performance and ‘a moment’, ‘the moment’ that is in the nature of theatre... That ‘moment’ has a structure that is established with difficulty, it is acquired arduously, and spent easily...
In the abyss of chaos we have been drawn into, we need to hope and laugh so we can survive. In order to distance ourselves from the pain, worries and fears...
M. Nurullah TUNCER |
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DUŠAN KOVAČEVIĆ - playwright, screenwriter, director
Born in 1948. Graduated Dramaturgy at the Academy for Theatre, Film, Radio and TV in 1973 with the play Radovan III, with Prof. Slobodan Selenić. From 1973 to 1978 worked as a dramaturge of the TV Belgrade Drama Programme. From 1986 to 1988 he is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. Since 1998 he is the director of Zvezdara Theatre in Belgrade. In October 2000 he was elected as an associate member of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2005/06 he is the ambassador of Serbia and Montenegro in Portugal.
He lives and works as a professional writer in Belgrade.
Plays: Marathoners are Running the Victory Lap (1973; Sterija Prize of Sterija’s city Vršac for contemporary comedy; at Pozorje 2005, director Dejan Mijač/SNT Nova Gorica / Slovenia), Radovan III (1973), What is There in the Human Being that Makes Him Drink (1976), Spring in January, Space Dragon, children’s play in verse (1977), Lemonation in the Countryside (1978), The Gathering Centre (1982), The Balkan Spy (1983, Sterija Prize for contemporary drama text), St. George Killing the Dragon (1986; Sterija Prize for text; at Pozorje 1995, directed by Branislav Lečić, National Theatre Athens /Greece), A Claustrophobic Comedy (1987, Sterija Prize for contemporary comedy, refused the prize: “Well, my text is not a comedy at all”), The Professional (1990; at Pozorje 1996, directed by H. Popescu, National Theatre 'Ion Luca Caragiale' Bucharest/ Romania; at Pozorje 1996, directed by Laurence Calam, Theatre Le Poche, Geneva, Theatre Vidy Lausanne / Switzerland), The Hilarious Tragedy (1991), Larry Thomson – Tragedy of a Youth (1996; at Pozorje 2001, directed by Mara Pašić Manolescu, Theatre Notara, Bucharest), The Five-Star Trash Container (1999), Dr. Schuster (2001, Sterija Prize for text). In Zvezdara Theatre he directed the first performance of his own plays: The Claustrophobic Comedy, The Professional, The Hilarious Tragedy, Larry Thomson, The Five-Star Trash Container, Dr. Schuster.
The plays written by Dušan Kovačević have been played in theatres in Eastern and Western Europe, United Kingdom, USA, Canada, Iran... and have been translated into German, English, French, Italian, Russian, Czech, Slovakian, Greek, Polish, Macedonian, Swedish, Finnish, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Slovenian, Persian, Turkish, Catalan, Spanish languages. Only in professional Belgrade theatres, more than 2500 plays have been set on stage after Kovačević’s texts. The majority of his plays have numerous video releases.
Screenplays for Film: Beasts (1976, directed by Ž. Nikolić), Special Treatment (1978, G. Paskaljević), Who is Singing Out There (1980, S. Šijan), Marathoners are Running the Victory Lap (1981, S. Šijan), The Balkan Spy (1984, D. Kovačević, B. Nikolić), The Gathering Centre (1990, G. Marković), Underground (1995, E. Kusturica), The Hilarious Tragedy (1995, G. Marković), The Professional (2003, D. Kovačević), St. George Killing the Dragon (2007, Srđan Dragojević).
TV Dramas and original screenplays: The Return of Thieves (1974), Two-bedroom Pub (1975), Stardust (1976).
TV Series: The Attic Between Heaven and Earth (1976, 13 episodes), Once Upon a Time There Was a Country (1995, 6 episodes).
Radio Dramas: 828 Kilometers North of the First Town (1970), There Was a Man (1970).
Novels: Once Upon a Time There Was a Country (1995), 20 Serbian Divisions (of Serbs by Serbs), Teddy is Singing Blues (2004).
Awards: He is the laureate of many professional, theatre and film prizes at home and abroad: Prize 'Miloš Crnjanski,’ the Belgrade October Prize, two Golden Arenas at Film Festivals in Pula, Prize ’Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša,’ City-Theatre Budva, The Golden Palm at the Cannes Festival (Underground), Sterija Prize for lifetime achievement. 'Vjekoslav Afrić' for the best creation in the field of film art (Marathoners), 'Branko Ćopić' (twice – The Balkan Spy, The Claustrophobic Comedy), The Union of Dramatic Artists of Yugoslavia 'Marin Držić' (The Balkan Spy), Statuette 'Joakim Vujić' for the contribution to the development of theatre art in Serbia, Comedy Days in Svetozarevo, October Prize of the City of Belgrade (screenplay for The Gathering Centre), Foundation 'Todor Manojlović' for modern artistic sensibility, Grand Prix for screenplay (The Balkan Spy, Professional) at the Film Festival in Montreal, award by the international jury of the critique for the best film – FIPRESCI Montreal (The Professional), award for the best screenplay at the International Festival in Viareggio (The Professional), screenplay for The Professional was nominated as one of the six best European screenplays in 2003 by EFA (European Film Academy) in Berlin, the Chaplin Award in Vevey (for the film Who is Singing Out There), First Prize at the TV festival in Cannes, Golden Palm at the Cannes Festival (Underground), awards of the film festivals in Valencia, Marseille, Vienna, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland... Who is Singing Out There was declared the best film of Yugoslav cinematogray made between 1945 and 1995. |
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FIGHTING FOR LIFE WITH LAUGHTER |
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For a writer who doesn’t want to add insult to injury in the existing pessimism, what is the real purpose of „A little bitter comedy about a lie“?
- I was interested in what does today, in 2008, bring people to the situation to commit crime against themselves and others. I could not help noticing that suicides and homicides became an epidemic phenomenon, and that the verbal promise offered to a person today, the advice to the drowning man is: swim, swim until you can, until you get tired and drown. And this is, in essence, my feeling of the time we live in, in which newspapers and TV are full of everyday reports of how someone somewhere killed his family, and another person had an extra bullet in his head, or didn’t have anyone close enough, so he shot himself. There is nowhere to hide from such informations. But there is an “underground stream” – in order for the audience not to come out of the theatre in a worse mood than when it entered it, I tried to write the best comedy I could, so people could laugh, let me immodestly say, in a therapeutic manner, and create the sort of catharsis characteristic for a drama into a catharsis through laughter...
If the chronology of your pieces is followed, does the “General Rehearsal for Suicide,” metaphorically, represent our most destructible epoch, even though in this story you only indirectly deal with political issues?
- I am convnced that the state should seriously deal with the problem that its citizens are brought to the situation to commmit crime, if they don’t commit crime to themselves beforehand, so they are thwarted... What is it that polarises people on this planet, and why are there more and more of those who want to exact revenge? Is it the global inequality, inhumanity in the view of justice, the distribution of wealth, from big ideas to food?... If someone has a daily profit equal to that of a small country, that is obvious Satanism. If a man daily makes, in a new democratic country, as much as a city makes in a year, why did we fight and how far have we got?...
Where could we, according to our mentality, look for and find optimism today?
- We are lucky that in our mentality, somewhere deep inside, there is a feeling encoded that “something will happen,” despite all the facts that “something” is impossible. And, starting with that irrational feeling, that “tragic optimism,” we succeeded in surviving miracles and horrors, which would destroy all the other nations, it would take them collectively to a bridge. All the other nations except Germans, of course. Laughter is the last thing with which one fights for life. And we were famous for mocking and deriding ourselves, and others at the same time. Joke has kept us, thank you to her. (...)
Radmila RADOSAVLJEVIĆ, Večernje novosti, December 30th 2008 |
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Behind the curtain of a play
Does ’the system’ force a man to kill himself? (...) It does. Moreover, it shows it like a desire of the man itself, and you subconsciously live through the story of the Greek Antique hero tragedies in which ’one does not go against one’s fate’...
Sooner of later you will come to the bridge. While you come, your whole spirit is squeezed out anyway, and you are partly dead. Thus ’that moment’ – is ’the moment’ of your life you don’t realise is different from the film you have seen...
General rehearsal so he wouldn’t come to the bridge, in the process of society transformation, in order to think one more time about what’s happening to you.
Imagine a ’play’!
Dogan KORKMAZ
Why doesn’t the wolf graze on grass?
(...) The play in a wonderful manner deals with some of the greatest problems – feelings of stress, hopelessness, no exit, escape. It talks about how a man who gives up cultivating his spirit and who races towards earthly goods in essence does not have anything except himself, and he is going toward the beginning of the end. The writer says that the human being is even weaker when, in the moment of committing suicide, he perceives an opportunity and tries to grab onto every stretched out hand of salvation. And in that weakest moment, the merchants of hope grab him and make him into a toy of their own desires.
A successful performance with the unity of a team that understands itself well is shown. We look at all the actors how they harmoniously dance tango with a subtle feeling of the rhythm, not separated from one another. The viewer clearly feels they complement each other, and there is a team spirit needed in this kind of piece. It is impossible not to congratulate Bora Seckin who swings on the bridge just before killing himself, and who is playing his role knowing what he wants, Bennu Yildirim who breathes into each of her roles a litte of her own spirit and who makes us feel her breath, the young Ibrahim Can who convinced us in the power of his enthusiastic acting. Serhat Kilic should be especially contgratulated for taking the difficult task of playing a few roles because he offered to each one a particular visualisation and acting spirit. While visual effects of the play lead a person to different ideas not separating him from the play, using the crucial points they do not disperse and do not separate. A successful musical support of a visually rich play and the use of decor and light rays on the stage are a basis of a visual abundance. When we look around there is nothing on the stage, but while the light rays, which are moving up and down during the play, are successfully drawing us into the play, there is no possibility of hiding behind a giant decor. Thus on a bare stage we follow a bare actors’ skills...
Cuneyt INGIZ, tiyatrodunyasi.com, December 15th 2009 |
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