Mesut Arslan

“ve veya ya da”, “Oda ve Adam”

Artist presentation
Theatre
60′
April 7th 2012, Saturday | 13.00
Taldans Studio Karaköy

Mesut Arslan, who currently resides in Antwerp-Belgium, will give information about his play ve veya ya da which he had adapted from the texts of Marguerite Duras and Oscar van den Boogaard and staged in 2011 with actors he collaborated in Turkey, and about Oda ve Adam, a play written by Eric de Volder, which will premiere at IKSV 18th Istanbul Theatre Festival in May. 

The presentation will be in English.

ve veya ya da

ve veya ya da means “either/or”. Choices, that is the topic of this theatrical perfomance; choices to be made by the performers and by the spectators alike. Four actors perform two texts of a completely different nature. Marguerite Duras’ Le Squareis a play where “nothing happens” – according to the disappointed French critics after its opening in Paris. Two (former) lovers discuss life and the choices they have (not) made. In contrast, Oscar Van den Boogaards text Een bed vol schuim (“A bed filled with foam”) is written with the idea that it is better to present facts, which will automatically bring out the truth. ve veya ya da combines, confronts and mingles these two texts, acted out by four actors in different constellations. Thus, an intriguing mix of new associations and meanings arises.

Concept & Director Mesut Arslan

Text Marguerite Duras & Oscar van den Boogaard

Dramaturgy Ata Ünal

Light Turan Tayar

Scenography Meryem Bayram

Costume Meryem Bayram & Nilüfer Karaca (Antijen)

Translation Meryem Bayram & Zeynep Baki

Subtitles Melek Arslan

Performance Derya Alabora, Erdem Akakçe, Engin Hepileri, Nergis Öztürk

Production TheaterOnderhetvel/Mesut Arslan, garajistanbul, 0090 KunstenFestival

Production Management Gamze Özen

Oda ve Adam

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If the image you created stays out of reality, you may not take place as an object in your own image. If the image in your mind is real, you may not recognize the subject of the image which you come across in reality. Even if you are the image in another’s mind, you may be the verb of an image which does not belong to you in reality.

Oda ve Adam (“The room and the Man“) is about the love and the possibility of relationship which find their expression in the hidden details of everyday life. The play mainly depends on a single text which is told separately from the complementary and conflictual viewpoints of woman and man. Oda ve Adam lurks along the ambiguous, transitional but at the same time tense borders between monologue and dialogue, casual and formal speech, simple and complex, lonely and crowded, possible and impossible, image and reality, woman and man. It confronts the spectator with both the effort of following a plain story and the multilayered associative fields of a mixture of language, sound, body and image. On one side the horizon between reality and dream, on the other the interrelationship between woman, man and image.

Original Title Kamer En De Man

Collective Theater Onderhetvel

Written by Eric De Volder

Directed by Mesut Arslan

Actors Nergis Öztürk, Engin Hepileri

Stage design and costume Meryem Bayram

Sound, Light and Visual Design Gürkan Mıhçı, Ozan Akıncı, Turan Tayar

Dramaturge Ata Ünal

Translation Saban Ol

Supported by Kunstenfestival 0090 Belçika, Toneelhuis Belçika

Production Mesut Arslan/Theater Onderhetvel

Mesut Arslan acted in the productions of City Theatre of Izmir and Yeni Asir Theatre Group where he was director-assistant. In Belgium, he directed and acted in productions of ATG between 1999 and 2005. He is a founder and artistic director of Arts Festival 0090 and curated the Theatre Festival of Belgium en Nederlands 2006. As a director, he established Theatre Onderhetvel in 2005, alongside with choreograph Eric Raeves and visual artist and stage designer Meryem Bayram. The layered diversity -in cultural background and artistic discipline- brought together the artistic core of Theatre Onderhetvel, which has reflected in the joint quest for artistic experiments titillating confrontation on the floor. Striking examples of artistic collaboration were the productions Kamer en de Man & Hebben/Zijn. In PLOT, Onderhetvel turned the investigation further  into the relationships within the elements that constitute the theater. Furthermore, Mesut Arslan put down a production in 2009 in WorkspaceLokaal 01 with Meryem Bayram, a visual material to deepen our understanding of theatre. In 2010 he stood alongside Guy Cassiers as artistic collaborator. And in early 2011, after 18 years, he directed in Istanbul the piece ve veya ya da. This performance has been shown for two consecutive weeks in Garajistanbul and scheduled for the 2011-12 season.

Arslan, perhaps through several roots, Macedonian, Kosovan, Turkish, Belgian, Flemish, somehow makes a reconstruction of texts, scenes, authors, images together to create a new structure where unconscious has more or less equally attention as consciousness. In his words “The Act and the Dream have had sex with each other and have their child called Time.”