By Heidi Trautmann

The Theatre Festival 2013 is history, an incredible success showing the interest and love of the North Cypriots for theatre; all thirteen performances were sold out right from the very beginning. Tickets were ridiculously cheap with TL 15,- each in order to make it affordable for everyone in the community.  Myself, I attended six of the thirteen performances with theatre companies of first order at the Atatürk Conference Centre of the Near East University. Although I was not able to understand everything - I had made myself knowledgeable beforehand by reading the plot in the internet – I enjoyed myself thoroughly.  I mean you don’t mind to go to an Italian or French opera, do you? Thus I fully concentrated on what was interesting for me that was the acting, choreography and stage design.

One of the last two performances was OTHELLO by W. Shakespeare, translated by Özdemir Nutku and directed by Malcolm Keith Kay, a guest director at the Antalya State Theatre. The stage design was very interesting, a sort of rollercoaster across the entire stage, a metal construction with valleys and hills; the atmosphere was dominated by the colours black, red and white. The lighting was mainly done from the stage itself along the running boards and with the smoke rising the light beams gave geometric effects. The first scene was spectacular with a red chiffon shawl rising, blown up by an air blower, within the white smoke and the crossing beams of light, like a dancing figure. The costumes were in shiny black material thus reflecting the light. All this supported the dramatic plot just as the overdrawn pantomimic movements of the characters did to demonstrate the atmosphere of hate, mistrust, jealousy and finally death, a death in glowing red. The play as such concentrated on the fight between Othello and Iago and the power they exerted over each other.

The other play, the last one was SÖZ MECLISTEN ICERI with the Ankara Ekin Theatre, a tour theatre, a very interesting kind of political satiric cabaret with various essays on events in Turkey written by Uğur Mumcu, a journalist assassinated in 1993 by a bomb placed in his car outside his house. We see the character of this journalist sitting at his typewriter between the various stories. A mostly text intensive play and I really regretted that my Turkish was too poor to follow the dialogues properly. The stage design was made up by pieces of the exploded car. Insider voices told me that it is a very good production, with the text adapted for stage by Metin Düzenleme.

Yaşar Ersoy, the main power behind the organization of this yearly event in Cyprus took leave of the audience by thanking all those who have made the event possible, the sponsors, the theatres who undertook the effort to come to Cyprus, they are friends, the LBT (Lefkoşa Belediye Tiyatrosu) team – all came onto the stage – and finally the audience for whom the efforts were all done. Not to forget the Lefkoşa Belediye Orchestra and the Nefesli Trio who played beautifully fine music in the entrance hall on all occasions which gave a very special note of expectation to each evening.