Turkey is Beautiful

One day in Turkey, we decided to forego the afternoon performance at the festival and instead to pay a visit to a nearby lake.

Totally worth it.

See? Told ya.

Oh, you know, just chillin on rocks...

Like mermaids...

lookin fierce...

lookin at this:

There was a weird cement pier/dam/thing that curved its way out into the middle of the lake. Couldn't pass that one up.

aaaaaand we brought snacks. of course.

From there we had a great view of the lake town, despite the cloudy day.

And a great view of a dead crab. there were a few of them around. The ants had a good time!

Sophie continued down to the very end of the pier

And I found this guy!!

(...yup. that's the end of this one. wanted to end on a high note!)

We Are Thy Labyrinth!

Earlier this semester, our cohort was invited to perform at the Arda Kanpolat Tiyatro Festivali, a theatre festival in Isparta, Turkey!  Unfortunately all 12 of us were not able to go, therefore preventing us both from taking a show we'd already created (like Midsummer) and from using class time to create a new show. SO, being the eager-beaver overachievers we are, we came up with a show concept and started rehearsing on weekends, putting together something completely on our own :) 

We started with the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and decided to tell the same story from 3 different perspectives - Theseus's, Ariadne's, and the minotaur's. We structured the show in 3 acts, each with its own director and its own rehearsals, and off we went!

Throughout the show we traded characters, exchanged props, and never left the stage. Super meta.

And since we were flying to Turkey on cheap airlines, we were pretty limited in what we could bring along, so props and costumes had to be sparse.

AND, since we would be performing for a predominantly Turkish audience (with others from Iran, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic), we knew we couldn't rely on their understanding of English. So while we used words, we called upon our physical theatre powers to communicate!

We created a badass minotaur:

...that had to fight!

Actually there were 3 minotaur versions, varying in size. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the 2nd one (made of 2 people) but you'll see the third one later.

There was dancing!

And drama!

And lots of string!!

no seriously there was a ton of string. Oh, and that's minotaur version 3. too bad you can't see his physicality. it was cool. That was for the Minotaur's perspective.

After the show, we were super sweaty, but excited to have had a great performance! Our helper/guide Berkay ran backstage and took this photo of (some of) us:

In the end, we got an trophy! The Jury's Special Award! Which basically means that they wanted to recognize us, but didn't give us any of the other awards (like best actor or scene design, etc). It was pretty cool!

(photos by Claudia Schnurer)