danzon_eng

Organized by GalataPerform and being the first playwriting festival in Turkey, the New Text Festival was held for the tenth time this year between November 1st and 28th, 2021, with a hybrid structure focused on the theme of "Breath", both in the physical space and digitally.   We hosted Magne van den Berg in the second of our conversations with international playwrights whose plays were translated into Turkish and staged and read at the festival.   Ayşe Draz & Mehmet Kerem Özel © Caroline Bijlhi What is the essence of good play/playwriting in your opinion? For me the essence is to find the right tone in which a play is put… almost like making music… the right content in the right form, makes a good play a good for me… besides that it is important that a play shows me something that was hidden, that I was uncontious of, a taboo, a pain or un unconvenient thuth that is not easy to talk about, and I like it when there is something to laugh and cry about. Do you believe in t

Organized by GalataPerform and being the first playwriting festival in Turkey, the New Text Festival was held for the tenth time this year between November 1st and 28th, 2021, with a hybrid structure focused on the theme of "Breath", both in the physical space and digitally.  We hosted Demian Vitanza in the first of our conversations with international playwrights whose plays were translated into Turkish and staged and read at the festival. Ayşe Draz & Mehmet Kerem Özel © Tine Poppe What is the essence of good play/playwriting in your opinion? I believe a good play creates problems for the theatre. That is, a play which is able to force the producing theatre to rethink how a text should be staged. In the end, a good play challenges the audience to think or feel in new ways. Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How? I believe in the double role of comfort and disturbance. A wellknown saying goes: Art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. I