Turkish actress performs in international productions

 

Istanbul (Dunya) – When Oya Bacak, 27, and her schoolmates at St. Mary's University College in London formed a physical theater troupe in April 2012, little did they know that they would win the "best director" and "best play" awards at an international theater festival.

 

The international Cake Tree theater group, in which the young Turkish actress and eight others from five countries are members, won the awards at the Miryang International Theater Festival in South Korea in August 2012.

 

Composed of nine drama graduates from Turkey, southern Cyprus, South Korea, England, Germany and Greece, the troupe won the awards for the physical theater plays 'If Only' and 'Across the Border.' 

 

The former play was based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' while the later was a dramatic adaptation from Portuguese Nobel Prize winning novelist Jose Saramago's 'Death at Intervals," where people stop dying.

 

The troupe, which first performed the plays at various sites in London, spent about a month in South Korea, performing at two festivals, the Keochang Festival and the Miryang Festival. One of the plays was performed among rice paddies before hundreds of spectators.

 

In physical theater, story telling is mainly by physical motions of the performers and contortions of the bodies of the actors and actresses.

 

"We had neither directors, nor scripts to go by, so we improvized the whole lot as we went along," Miss Bacak said in an interview in Istanbul. "We were treated well in South Korea." 

 

The group is now considering a new play about the end of the world, and considering to go back to South Korea, where they have been invited to numerous festivals. 

 

"The performers will decide on what they would try to save if the world were coming to an end," Miss Bacak said. "They will have play out feelings such as happiness and guilt using their bodies."

 

 

Elite group

 

The young actress joins an elite group of Turks who have studied theater abroad and acted in and directed international productions outside Turkey. 

 

Turkish actresses, directors and playwrights who have studied abroad and worked in international theater include actresses Meltem Cumbul, and Pinar Ogun, Ayla Algan, Fusun Demirel, the actors Haluk Bilginer and Ali  Poyrazoglu, director Haldun Dormen, playwright Refik Erduran and the late Muhsin Ertugrul, the founder of modern Turkish theater.

 

A former ballerina, Miss Bacak graduated from the Italian High School in Istanbul, and received BFA in perfoming arts from the University of Rome. She received an MA in physical theater from St. Mary's University College in London.

 

Her first acting experience was in Turkey as a 19-year-old when she studied under Ayla Algan, a prominent Turkish actress-director. 

 

She also performed in numerous plays and short movies in Rome and London, and worked as production assistant and stage manager in the London theatrical performance of the  1950s American movie 'Sweet Smell of Success," which was directed by Mehmet Ergen, a Turk.

Cake Tree

 

Members of the Cake Tree group met at St. Mary's University and they formed the physical theater troupe that has been performing since mid-summer of last year.

 

Other members of the group include Stefanos Achilleos (Southern Cyprus), Yoonsoo Kang (South Korea), Charlotte Lewis (England), Erica Mileham (England), Hannah Tompkins (England), Anne Tysiak (Germany), Alexander Raptotasios (Greece) and Ruth Williams (England).