Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui 29 (2017) 375–387 brill.com/sbt They … to Play A Turkish Take on Beckett Burç İdem Dinçel PhD Candidate in Drama, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland [email protected] Abstract This paper seeks to present an historical overview of the Studio Players’ Beckett pro- ductions in Turkey in the 1990s, with the purpose of discussing the playwright’s role for the director Şahika Tekand during the development of her “performative staging and acting” method. After examining the Studio Players’ OedipusTrilogy (2002/2004/2006), with which the ensemble achieved international recognition, the article will conclude with a focus on a Beckett production—Play (2012)—that Tekand directed in the Istan- bul Municipality Theatre for the Istanbul Theatre Festival, so as to provide an account of the director’s first experience in working with actors outside her company. Résumé Cet article vise à présenter un aperçu historique des mises en scène de Beckett que le Studio Players a réalisées enTurquie dans les années 1990 et à expliquer le rôle qu’a joué Beckett dramaturge pour la metteure en scène Şahika Tekand dans le développement de sa méthode de ‘mise en scène et de jeu performatifs’. Après une évocation de l’Oedipus Trilogy (2002/2004/2006) qui a assuré au Studio Players une reconnaissance internationale, l’article se concentrera sur une mise en scène de Play que Tekand à réalisée à l’Istanbul Municipality Theatre lors du Festival de théâtre d’Istanbul en 2012. On donnera ainsi une idée de sa première expérience de travail avec des acteurs n’appartenant pas à sa troupe. Keywords staging – reception – Beckett – Şahika Tekand – the Studio Players – Turkey © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/18757405-02902013Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 04:39:48PM via free access 376 dinçel Staging Beckett, Developing a “Method”: The Case of the Studio Players To say that Beckett is a source of inspiration for many theatre workers would be nothing new. Still, it is worth examining in detail the crucial part that Beckett’s work can play in a director’s career. In this particular respect, Şahika Tekand’s engagement with Beckett’s (meta)theatrical universe provides fertile ground not only to scrutinise how Beckett is staged and restaged in Turkey, but also for an inquiry into the ways in which Beckettian aesthetics form the backbone of a highly individual method that proves to be quite effective in moving a variety of dramatic texts from page to stage. The emergence of this method goes back to 1988 when the first founda- tions of the Studio Players were laid by Tekand and her husband Esat in Istan- bul. Initially founded as the performance group of the “Studio for Actors and Art,” the Studio Players acquired professional status in 1990. And from these early years onwards, “the ensemble adopted the principle of ‘researching and implementing the contemporary’ in performing arts, specifically in the craft of acting” (Ülgen, 47).1 This decade can be seen as one of the most substan- tial phases of this research, since throughout the 1990s, this investigation, and, by extension, its resonances in the practical field of theatre, gradually evolved into what Tekand theorised as a “performative staging and acting method.” For this, the director drew heavily on a “game concept” in which “the actor becomes exposed to the rules of the game” (qtd. in Karaboğa, 174). Within the frame of the method, the rules have a dual function: on the one hand, they provide a way for Tekand to attain the performative; and on the other, they compel both the actors and the director to be creative within the constraints imposed by the demands of the game. Tekand’s notion of the game establishes the necessary grounds to sketch the fundamental features of her method. At the outset, however, it is important to observe that “even if the staging method is based on the game concept, the ‘game’ is not an end in itself; it serves as a means for the art of theatre. The game exists simply to reveal the theatrical itself” (Ülgen, 31). As such, honesty is vital, as in, the actor’s ability to play a game honestly in the performative moment. To a certain degree, this ability hinges on the actors’ willingness to surrender themselves to the rules of the game. Furthermore, once they yield to the rules, the actors rendering the so-called dramatic plots on stage become obliged to cope with the challenges posed by the game. This honesty gives 1 Unless indicated otherwise, all translations are my own. Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’huiDownloaded from 29 Brill.com10/01/2021 (2017) 375–387 04:39:48PM via free access they … to play 377 rise to a performative conflict stemming simultaneously from the internal and external actions of the actors in the here and now, which, in turn, make all the risks taken during the performances real and allow room for human error. Amongst many others, the most evident risk in terms of adaptation that the Studio Players take in their productions is the key role attributed to the usage of (spot)lights, to an extent that the light grows into the sole authority within the performances. One can plausibly take this role literally, for the performers operating the (spot)lights are considered as “light-players” and come to be an integral part of each production. Tekand acknowledges that Beckett lies behind this conceptual framework. Her decision to stage Beckett coincides with the early stages of a period of investigation in the 1990s when she was in search of a dramatist who prof- fered the theatrical context best fitted to her staging method. With all his pre- cision, discipline, seemingly strict rules and emphasis on a form that could “accommodate the mess” (qtd. in Driver, 243), Beckett would eventually be that playwright. Tekand was especially struck by the form of Beckett’s work and its implications for performance: “When you start to translate that form into the form of a performance, you face a real challenge and an exploration process; a reversed exploration back to the text itself begins. In fact, the text presents itself as a game” (qtd. in Dinçel 2012, 96). What captures the attention in these words, is Tekand’s association of staging Beckett with the act—or rather, pathos of— translation, thereby bringing the question of fidelity into focus when mounting the author’s works: “You,as the one who stages the play considering it your duty to be aware of the responsibility towards the author, I mean, having a sense of responsibility for staging Beckett and realising at all times that you will be held responsible for staging Beckett, and act accordingly, look for a proper move- ment and a proper voice, not the word, the meaning, or the plot, only those things as abstract, as movement and voice” (96). Clearly driven by the demands of accountability, this directorial response to Beckett goes hand in hand with the significance attached to honesty in Tekand’s staging and acting method. Looking at the history and theatre praxis of the Studio Players can shed light on the company’s productions in the 1990s as well as the author’s reception in the Turkish theatrical scene. Whilst Jonathan Kalb states that “Beckett’s stage plays actually changed many people’s notions of what can happen, or is sup- posed to happen, when they enter a theatre” (124), one can hardly extend this assertion to the Turkish theatrical system where the central position is mainly occupied byWaitingforGodot, ever since the first production of the piece by the Little Stage in the 1954–1955 season. Apart from the State Theatres’ productions of Krapp’s Last Tape in the 1961–1962, as well as Happy Days in the 1989–1990 and 1990–1991 seasons respectively, most of the theatre practitioners in Turkey Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui 29 (2017) 375–387Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 04:39:48PM via free access 378 dinçel have been inclined to stage Godot; a tendency that hindered the Turkish audi- ence from experiencing what can happen, or is supposed to happen, when (to paraphrase Kalb) they enter into Beckett’s universe. The Studio Players went directly against the grain of this tendency by staging Happy Days (1993), “Five Short Plays” (1994) and Endgame (1998) at the margins of the Turkish theatrical system. Additionally, and maybe more significantly, by “deliberately staying away from Godot”2 (qtd. in Dinçel 2012, 42), Tekand and her ensemble not only provided Turkish spectators with a rare chance to appreciate other parts of Beckett’s theatrical universe, but also derived con- siderable benefit from Beckettian aesthetics in terms of making practical and international progress as an ensemble acting under the auspices of the “perfor- mative staging and acting method.” Of these Beckett productions, “Five Short Plays” is particularly noteworthy, owing to the novelty that Tekand introduced when staging the “dramaticules.” Katharine Worth has noted the difficulty of staging these pieces (2001, 161). Worth suggests that Katie Mitchell’s produc- tion of a “group of shorts”3 at the Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon (22 October 1997) can be regarded as one probable way of staging these plays (161). Worth’s observation is remarkable in that it demonstrates how the question of present- ing Beckett’s abstract pieces of theatre is an issue that keeps (Western) theatre practitioners quite busy. Then again, three years earlier, Tekand had already proposed a similar solution for staging Beckett’s performative explorations of theatrical minimalism and abstraction. Composed of Act Without Words i, Act WithoutWords ii, Breath, Play and Come and Go, “Five Short Plays” was a crucial step towards introducing Beckett’s short pieces to Turkish theatre-goers.