Based Istanbul Welcomes: Öteki
How would you feel if one day you met someone who looked exactly like you? Someone who physically resembles you perfectly, but is the exact opposite of you in terms of character; someone who has traits you hate and cannot tolerate, but who, precisely because of these traits, can achieve your goals much more easily than you can, and therefore someone you secretly wish you could be. Both your alter-ego and your enemy. Öteki, adapted by Emin Alper from Dostoevsky’s Dostoevsky’s work of the same name, deals with the suffering of the character Burak, who has the ambition to rise but cannot rise for various reasons, while at the same time summarizing today’s society where lack of merit, nepotism and political comments often prevent people from getting where they deserve. Transferring a similar pain in Dostoyevsky’s 19th century tragedy to the white-collar world of today, Emin Alper tells us at every moment of the play how the feeling of worthlessness and anxieties that people experience in a society where they think that their potential and value are not recognized slowly evolve into a delusion of personality. With director Emin Alper and actors Cem Yiğit Üzümoğlu, Erdem Şenocak, Derya Karadaş and Gökhan Yıkılkan, we embark on a journey towards the “Öteki” within ourselves.
Öteki is a modern take on Dostoevsky’s work. Could you share with us the intellectual themes and creative inspirations behind this modern interpretation?
Emin Alper: In many of his works Dostoevsky depicts the deep unhappiness of people who are dissatisfied with themselves and their social position, who always see themselves in higher places but cannot rise high enough either because of their limited abilities or because their path is blocked by the aristocracy. This typology is in fact the definition of modern man. The modern man of capitalist society, whose desire for advancement is provoked by the sharpness of the social hierarchy and intense competition, and who is pushed into the embrace of unhappiness when he fails to achieve his goals. Therefore, when I adapted “Öteki”, I tried to transfer the world of Dostoevsky to the white-collar world, where competition and the accompanying feeling of worthlessness are experienced most intensely. In this way, I thought that I would be faithful to the spirit of the author and make the play timeless and spatialized in a way that would touch the lives of a wide range of people.
Your theater play boldly tackles the working culture and class divisions in Turkey. What would you like to say about your thoughts on this subject and the mission of your play as a social mirror?
Emin Alper: Most of us spend a large part of our lives at work. We make our most intense social contacts at work. Therefore, the most important part of our self-consciousness is shaped at work and through our work. Our self-worth is determined by the work we do, the position we hold or the praise we receive at work. And we keep asking ourselves whether the people who attribute this value to us, the “bosses”, are really competent people. The white-collar world is an environment where competition and undermining each other rather than a culture of collaborative work, and the effort to rise by fawning over others rather than talent and skill color the culture of business life. I wanted to reflect a world that has such a corrosive, exhausting and destructive effect on human character through this play.
How did being inspired by Dostoevsky’s work play a role in bridging the gap between stage and camera? Can you share the elements that shape your aesthetic as a director?
Emin Alper: I’m not sure if Dostoevsky has a special role in building a bridge between cinema and theater. But I think I can talk more about this novella rather than Dostoevsky in general. One of the most provocative aspects of this story for me was the issue of “similarity”. It is very easy to explain similarity in cinema and literature. But in theater, the same two people cannot be on stage at the same time. This was both a challenge and an opportunity for me. We played with this idea in various ways throughout the play. We used mirrors as the basic material of staging. As for the idea of using a screen, we had a very fruitful collaboration with our set designer Deniz Kobanbay, our lighting designer Ahmet Sesigürgil and our video designer Savaş Deniz Ertan, who themselves come from the world of cinema like me, and we created the visual world on stage. For me, the visual world was an element that was not completely realistic and reflected the mental world of our character as much as the locations, maybe even more than that. That’s why we sometimes used abstract elements.
The concept of “cinematographic theater” used in Öteki aims to connect the audience with emotions and thoughts rather than just watching. While the stage design directly affects the narrative power of the play, the character Burak Çıplak bears traces of everyone. Erdem Şenocak thinks that expressing the transformation of Burak’s character on stage together with the audience is a special adventure. “The ambitions, complexes and resentments that appear in all of us at different times and to different degrees are crystallized in Dostoevsky’s Golyadkin and Emin Alper’s Burak Çıplak, and they have been advanced to the level of illness. As readers and viewers, encountering a slightly exaggerated version of ourselves is a way of recognizing and healing from shortcomings we would not normally see.”
While giving life to the character of Burak, what was the process of understanding the psychological depths of the character and bringing this emotional richness to the stage?
Cem Yiğit Üzümoğlu: Actually, I can say that I tried to approach it quite externally. Because narratively, technically and aesthetically, psychological reality was not an element I was looking for. It’s good that the audience understands it that way, and that’s one of the desirable things, but as I said, instead of portraying a realistic individual, I wanted to create his actions, the speed of transience and the unpredictable vitality of the stream of consciousness. This probably wouldn’t work in a psychological methodology.
Erdem Şenocak: Burak Çıplak is a character who cannot be himself, perhaps because he constantly compares himself to others, looks at himself through the eyes of others, and bears many traces of others. Since he builds relationships with people on the basis of defeating or being defeated, his actions constantly change according to the situation. For example, when the maid he is trying to dominate does not make concessions to him, he can apologize to her within seconds. He can see himself at the top of the sky one moment and at the bottom of the earth the next. Playing such a toy character is of course a great chance and responsibility for an actor. The other Burak represents everything that Burak cannot be. Therefore, he is a completely different type and requires a completely different range of acting, which again is a challenge for an actor. Finally, I should add that rehearsing and playing these two characters together with Cem Yiğit Üzümoğlu was a great happiness and chance for me.
What are your thoughts on human nature as your characters deal with their inner conflicts and social criticism?
Cem Yiğit Üzümoğlu: The character Burak feels extremely stuck in such situations. His increasingly paranoid state is a manifestation of this ongoing stuckness. It is precisely this inability to cope that makes him who he is and puts him in a position to compare himself with the “Öteki”.
The stories of the characters in the play are intense and complex. Was it difficult for you to delve into the psychological depths of your roles?
Derya Karadaş: I try to understand the psychology of every role I prepare for. This is our duty as actors. After reading Emin Alper’s tremendous text, I read Öteki once from Dostoevsky. I watched movies on the subject, read the articles I could find and then tried to play what I understood. We are a talkative, hardworking team. Working on a psychological text is very developing along with the rehearsal and play process.
The theater play successfully combines black comedy and dramatic elements. What do you think was the challenge of balancing these two opposite emotional states?
Gökhan Yıkılkan: Actually, there is no opposite emotion, what you call comedy is exactly tragedy itself. We are not doing comedy in any way. The pathetic state of this reality and the struggle with the devil inside us gives birth to comedy by itself. In fact, we find ourselves laughing at our own crying state.
In your own acting methodology, how did you shape the inner world of the character?
Erdem Şenocak: Acting also requires a kind of detective work. Of course, you do this together with your fellow actors and the director. You try to find out the actions of the character and the scene with the help of questions such as under what conditions, what the character wants, what he/she hides, etc. before and after that scene. In other words, you try to understand the text. This effort to understand continues not only at the desk but also on stage. There you test, confirm or reject the answers you have given to the questions I have just mentioned, you find new answers, you ask new questions; in practice, by doing it yourself. In other words, you try to understand and create the inner world and the outer world of the character together. As far as I understand from acting theorists, the inner world and the outer world are not as separate as one might think, neither in acting nor in daily life. They are things that affect each other constantly and irresistibly; so when you are working on a character, you have to deal with both of them simultaneously.
When you think about the impact of your play on the audience, what kind of a bond did you feel you established with the audience? How do you evaluate the audience’s emotional and intellectual interaction with the work?
Derya Karadaş: There is someone else speaking inside us. I think we can control the weight of our traumas. The audience experiences a state of confrontation, thinking that at least I am not the only one who talks to himself and sometimes dives into the darkness. This may be the reason why the play is so popular.
In your opinion, how does this adaptation bring a new perspective to these themes and our daily lives?
Gökhan Yıkılkan: By trying to live as if we will never die, it allows us to take a distant look at our life and ourselves, which we lose among the positions we try to acquire while pursuing our desires. In fact, it reminds us of the effort to be one with ourselves while we spend our lives trying to win things that are not worth much.
Creative Direction by Duygu Bengi
Filmed by Umutcan Öncü, Dilara Ateş
Edited by Umutcan Öncü
Content Editor Belgin Demirhan
Editor Yiğitcan Genç, Seher Tosun
Styling by Murat Şentürk
Music by Salih Alkan
Öteki Directed by Emin Alper
Öteki Cast Cem Yiğit Üzümoğlu, Erdem Şenocak, Derya Karadaş, Gökhan Yıkılkan
A big thank you to Zorlu PSM family!