danzon_eng

What is the essence of good play/playwriting in your opinion? Good playwriting is ways of exploring different truths about the world. To find a truth and hold on to it, no matter which form or style. Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How? I do believe art has the ability to change people. And we are, for better or worse, the world. If I did not believe in this, I would find a different job.  When you are working on a text, what sources inspire you? Do dreams play a role in your works?   Although my academic background is very much inspired by both absurdism and surrealism, dreams are not that important to me. I always try to read a lot in periods of intensive writing. Often playwrights, but also other authors. From the assembled mass of inspiration and own thoughts, I often get these images stuck in my head. Images that won’t leave me. It could be the picture of someone sitting in an ice cream truck with blood on their hands, or perhaps someone slipping down i...

The New Text Festival, organized by GalataPerform, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, and which is Turkey's first and only playwriting festival, took place this year for the twelfth time between 24th November and 4th December 2023, focusing on the theme of "Real". At the festival, which creates an area where Turkish writers and directors meet with artists from abroad within the scope of Theater Beyond Borders, we continue from where we left off by publishing our conversations with international playwrights whose plays have been translated into Turkish and staged readings. Our next guest Marie Bjørn.  Marie Bjørn, who is interested in both theatre, film and prose writing, graduated from the Danish National Faculty of Performing Arts as a playwright in 2019 and from the alternative film school Super16 in Copenhagen as a screenwriter in 2022. Bjørn was nominated for the Reumert Playwright of the Year and Special Mention awards in 2020 for his first play, Apocal...

The New Text Festival, organized by GalataPerform, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, and which is Turkey's first and only playwriting festival, took place this year for the twelfth time between 24th November and 4th December 2023, focusing on the theme of "Real". At the festival, which creates an area where Turkish writers and directors meet with artists from abroad within the scope of Theater Beyond Borders, we continue from where we left off by publishing our conversations with international playwrights whose plays have been translated into Turkish and staged readings. Our next guest is  Malin Axelsson. Playwright, writer and director Malin Axelsson was born in Stockholm in 1975. The plays of the author, who graduated from the Swedish University Film, Radio, Television and Theater Department in 2002, have been translated into German, French, Italian, Romanian and Norwegian. She has been working as Artistic Director at Riksteatern Youth Theater since 2021....

The New Text Festival, organized by GalataPerform, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, and which is Turkey's first and only playwriting festival, took place this year for the twelfth time between 24th November and 4th December 2023, focusing on the theme of "Real". At the festival, which creates an area where Turkish writers and directors meet with artists from abroad within the scope of Theater Beyond Borders, we continue from where we left off by publishing our conversations with international playwrights whose plays have been translated into Turkish and staged readings. Our next guest is Tue Biering.  Over the last 25 years, Tue Biering has initiated and directed a wide variety of projects, including new dramatic works, classics, operas and interactive performances. He has won many awards, most recently the Crown Prince Couple's Cultural Award. Biering looks at our concepts of the world and shows different aspects of the stories that surround us that w...

Organised by GalataPerform, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, the New Text Festival, the first playwriting festival in Turkey, will take place for the twelfth time this year between 24 November and 4 December 2023 with the theme "Reality".  Tiago Correia is the first guest of our conversations with international playwrights, whose plays will be translated into Turkish and staged readings will be performed at the festival, which creates a space for Turkish writers and directors to meet artists from abroad within the framework of Theatre Beyond Borders. What is the essence of good play/playwriting in your opinion?  I think the essence of a good play is in its search for truth, whatever the kind of play. So, normally the essence of a good play is also the compromise that the artists - playwrights, directors, actors, set and light designers, costume designers, videographers, etc. - have with themselves, with each other and with theatre itself, in the search for...

© Emilia Therese Danish playwright and theater director Christian Lollike (1973) was among the participants of Nordic Focus, which was held for the first time this year as part of the New Text Festival. Within the scope of the event supported by the Danish Embassy, Danish Cultural Institute, Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Danish Ministry of Culture, Danish Consulate, Consulate General of Sweden, the Swedish Research Institute and the Swedish Arts Council, Lollike's play Cosmic Fear or Brad Pitt's Day of Paranoia  was performed as a staged reading. Lollike is working with stage and installation art in theaters, public areas and virtual platforms. He has produced a comprehensive amount of theatre texts and his texts are being played in and outside Europe. During the last couple of years, Lollike’s work has been dealing more and more with inter-aesthetics and he has made a ballet, an opera installation and a political party. His artistic drive derives from wanting to underst...

The New Text Festival, organized by GalataPerform since 2012 and which is the first playwriting festival in Turkey, was held for the 11th time this year. The theme of the festival, which met the audience between November 26 and December 4, 2022, was “Fear”. Fredrik Brattberg, from Norway, was the first guest of our conversations with the playwrights whose plays were translated into Turkish and performed as a staged reading. The New Text Festival, which has an important place in the field of theater in Turkey by increasing the visibility of new contemporary writers and introducing them to the performing arts sector, had a new section titled Nordic Focus , this year. Fredrik Brattberg, whose play Cantus was performed as staged reading, was among the participants of this section, which was supported by the Danish Embassy, the Danish Cultural Institute, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Danish Ministry of Culture, the Danish Consulate, the Swedish Consulate General, the Swedish ...

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 Joan Yago in the last of our conversations with international playwrights whose plays were translated into Turkish and staged and read at the festival. Ayşe Draz & Mehmet Kerem Özel What is the essence of good play/playwriting in your opinion?   Wow, I am not sure at all. But it probably has something to do with the fact of knowing what do you want to do to the audience, what do you want to happen to them, and then work hard thru your writing until make sure that this is working in the way you want. Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How? I want to believe. Otherwise why would I keep doing that? I know that theatre has the power of “lighting the spark”: a show can make you do...

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 Athena Farrokhzad in the fourth of our conversations with international playwrights whose plays were translated into Turkish and staged and read at the festival.  Ayşe Draz & Mehmet Kerem Özel © Carla Orrego Veliz What is the essence of good play/playwriting in your opinion? To me, a written play, more than anything, is literature. Therefor, the same quality criterias as other forms of writing can be applied to it: complexity and fierceness of style, a linguistic/existential/political/etc intervention that moves the reader/the world/the history of literature etc. Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How? Yes and no. I believe good art addresses the material conditions of life...

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 Cecilie Løveid in the third of our conversations with international playwrights whose plays were translated into Turkish and staged and read at the festival.   Ayşe Draz & Mehmet Kerem Özel © Helge Skodvin What is the essence of good play/playwriting in your opinion? I think the essence of good writing is if you can transfer from body to body a language we all understand, that is useful for the actor, a place the theater can renew itself, again and again. Through history the literary theatre has sometimes been boring, but it has also functioned as political platforms of ideas and its language of the heart maybe more honest than any other art form. People play to people, I live ...

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 bel...

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...