Prometheus revived in Turkish play

The characters created in Greek mythology and tragedies reflect such a universal psychological state of the human being that many playwrights refer to these sources when creating new characters.

The play “10 Adımda Unutmak (Anti-Prometheus)” (How to Forget in 10 Steps [Anti-Prometheus]) is a remarkable example of creating a totally new character out of Greek mythology.

The 24th ENKA Culture and Arts events kicked on Monday with the Turkish premiere of “10 Adımda Unutmak (Anti-Prometheus),” written and directed by Şahika Tekand. The play, which had its international premiere in Belgium, is performed by the İstanbul-based theater company Studio Oyuncuları (Studio Actors).

During the 2008 İstanbul Theater Festival, the Ruhr 2010 European Capital of Culture agency asked Tekand to take part as a playwright/director in the Promethiade project, a multinational theater project as part of the European Capital of Culture 2010 program, and also to produce another play for Germany. “[Promethiade] was produced in cooperation with the İstanbul 2010 [European Capital of Culture] Agency, the Athens Festival and the Ruhr 2010 [European Capital of Culture] Agency and I directed the play for Germany,” said Tekand in an interview with Today’s Zaman. For Greece, Rimini Protokoll produced another play and well-known Greek director Theodoros Terzopoulos produced a play for the İstanbul 2010 program. Terzopoulos directed the original text by Aeschylus and Protokoll staged one of its productions, “Prometheus in Athens.” Tekand wrote a totally new play and directed it, and it was “10 Adımda Unutmak (Anti-Prometheus).”

What Tekand has done differently and what is remarkable in this play is that she created an antagonist from Prometheus. “I created an anti-Prometheus character within the concept of Prometheus,” Tekand said last week in an interview with Today’s Zaman. “Prometheus is a god who stole the fire from Zeus because of his principles and for the sake of the human being. He was then punished by being tied to a rock and letting eagles eat his lungs everyday. He is a very important figure of tragedy with his feature of sacrificing himself. Moreover, he is a revolutionary figure who led a huge transformation of civilization.”

The anti-Prometheus, for Tekand, is a very usual contemporary personality of today’s world, someone who is used to a life of consumption, comfort and individual interests. “The features of Prometheus are the features that today’s individual cannot express,” Tekand said, “because the contemporary individual has fears, the contemporary individual cannot sacrifice himself or herself, the contemporary individual does not dare to revolt against the system; rather, he or she becomes obliged to [obey, be part of] the system voluntarily. This is anti-Prometheus. What I wanted to do was display the tragedy of this character.”

In this respect, the idea of “forgetting in 10 steps” coincides with this kind of personality since it is prone to forgetting the past, which would remind the person of certain realities. “This is not only a problem in Turkey but the entire world,” noted Tekand. “In the last 30 years, memory loss has been occurring throughout the world and in Turkey, as well. The system has re-written the memory of people in a very subtle way. So, to remind people about this process is a kind of responsibility for us.”

The “10 steps” in the play’s title is an ironic reference to the rapid and “ready-made” solutions to major problems that are being marketed in self-help books and the like. “The concept of ‘How to … in 10 steps’ is actually a trend that rose after the 1980s,” Tekand indicated. “‘How to lose weight in 10 steps,’ ‘How to be successful in 10 steps’ or ‘How to become a leader in 10 steps.’ … In our play, our characters forget their past or they think that they have forgotten their past.”

No place to perform

“During the 2010 program, we had two performances in Turkey; both were at the Muhsin Ertuğrul Theater and both were received with great interest,” explained Tekand, speaking about the İstanbul performances of the play two years ago. However, the play is different to the first version staged in 2010, she said. “I re-wrote the play in Turkish because the first version was bilingual; it was in Turkish and German.”

For those who missed Monday’s performance at the ENKA İbrahim Betil Auditorium, the play will be performed at Koç University at the end of March.

“The play requires a very big stage,” said Tekand, explaining why it cannot be staged more frequently and in more theaters. “If we find the opportunity and stages to perform, we would like to go on a tour of Turkey, but unfortunately Turkey is a little bit behind … international standards [in theater].”

Tekand sees the lack of sufficient theaters and stages in Turkey as one of the biggest problems with Turkish theater. “We have no complaints about the Turkish audience. They have always appreciated theater, but we don’t have [good] theaters in Turkey. There used to be the Atatürk Cultural Center [AKM in İstanbul], but it is closed now. It is a very miserable situation for a mega-city like İstanbul. This has nothing to do with the audience, but with administrations that are trying to turn theaters into malls.”

Yet, despite the company’s stalled plans to tour around Turkey, the play will tour several countries in the following months. “We will perform in Europe -- in Germany and the Netherlands -- and we will also probably go to Japan,” Tekand said. “We have received great feedback for our performances abroad. … We haven’t performed any play in 25 years that has not been understood internationally. That’s why we’ve been very popular and successful.”