eJournals Colloquia Germanica 53/1

Colloquia Germanica
cg
0010-1338
Francke Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel, der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/61
2021
531

Ela Gezen: Brecht, Turkish Theater, and Turkish German Literature: Reception, Adaptation, and Innovation after 1960. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2018. 159 pp. $ 85.00. E-book $24.99

61
2021
Paula Hanssen
cg5310101
Reviews Ela Gezen: Brecht, Turkish Theater, and Turkish German Literature: Reception, Adaptation, and Innovation after 1960. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2018. 159 pp. $ 85.00. E-book $24.99. An expert on both Turkish and German culture, Ela Gezen’s study provides new perspectives on German and Turkish literature, especially theater. Instead of presenting a stereotypical narrative of collaboration between the “liberal West” and the “unrelenting East,” Turkish and German cultural contexts are considered jointly. Brecht’s plays and their performances figure prominently in Gezen’s discussion because they were watched by international theatergoers in Turkey as well as in the two Germanys, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. For Turkish theater professionals, Brecht’s didactic approach was a way to a more political approach to theatrical performance, a way to connect with audiences without giving up elements of Turkish theater. Gezen’s book explores the discourse of Turkish theater practitioners from both East and West Germany, especially in connection with Bertolt Brecht’s drama theories. One example includes the attendance of Turkish theater ensembles at a student theater festival in the West (Erlangen) in 1954, followed by a visit to stage rehearsals of the Berliner Ensemble in the East (East Berlin), engaging with and reflecting on both Germanys’ theater practices. Gezen’s introductory chapter provides an overview of international Brecht conferences - where Brecht’s theories were introduced and discussed - attended by Turkish theater practitioners. Special attention is given to the actress and author Emine Sevgi Özdamar, and Aras Ören, also an actor and one of the most popular Turkish writers in Germany, first winner of the Adalbert von Chamisso Prize in 1985 for immigrants who write in German. Specifically, Gezen discusses didactic realism and literary presentation of alienated labor in Ören’s Berlin Trilogy, consisting of the epic poem Was will Niyazi in der Naunynstraße- (What’s Niyazi doing on Naunynstraße? ) (1973), one of the first major texts about the Berlin district Kreuzberg and its Turkish population; Der kurze Traum aus Kagithane- (The Brief Dream from Kagithane) (1974); and Die Fremde ist auch ein Haus-(A Foreign Place is a House, Too) (1980).- In addition to delineating a positive Turkish Brecht reception, Gezen identifies a trend against Brecht’s ideas. To this end, she includes a detailed report 102 Martin P. Sheehan on the “Brecht Incident” that rocked Istanbul in 1964, when a performance of Brecht’s Der gute Mensch von Sezuan (The Good Person of Szechwan) in Istanbul was interrupted by conservative, anti-communist reactionaries, which lead to a temporary ban on Brecht’s plays. Gezen then retraces the interactions and connectedness between the Turkish and German theater of the mid-twentieth century. Chapter One presents theatrical practices and dialectic approaches in Brecht’s works and the debates about them in Turkey. Chapters Two and Three describe Özdamar’s and Ören’s careers in Germany and include an analysis of one of their plays. Even with contemporary discussion about these writers’ works as German literature, they are often considered outsiders. Gezen’s study focuses on Turkish-German theater artists, German and Turkish journals, and theater festivals in Erlangen and Istanbul. It was in this climate, as Gezen shows, that both Özdamar and Ören had their first encounters with Brecht and German theater, mediated through the theater practitioner Vasif Öngören, a frequent guest at the Berliner Ensemble in the 1960s. He founded the first Turkish theater in Ankara which played most Brecht plays, the ‘Collective-Theater.’ Both German and Turkish theaters were adopting more modernist theories in the mid-twentieth century when Turkish authors were both publishing and performing. Ören was part of the Berlin political scene - Gezen points to his key role in-an anti‐fascist union of progressive artists allied with class struggle, “Die rote Nelke,” and at the publishing house ‘Rotbuch Verlag.’ He performed in the Brecht play Die Ausnahme und die Regel (The Eception and the Rule) in 1962 in Germany and in Turkey. Özdamar was engaged in productions at the Berlin Volksbühne and the Schauspielhaus Bochum. In Chapter Two, in her discussion of didactic realism, Gezen profiles the various players around Özdamar, such as the actor and director Manfred Karge, the director of the Berliner Ensemble Manfred Wekwerth, and the photographer and dramaturge Benno Besson - all of them undoubtedly influenced by Brecht, but also thinkers and theater makers in their own right. Gezen includes an interesting section on the “Lehrstück,” Brechts theory of the teaching/ learning play. Ören began using Brecht’s theory of a teaching play to conceive a play using his own characters from the Berlin Trilogy� Gezen’s study demonstrates that the theater is a particularly productive lens through which to view Turkish-German (cultural) interchange. The convergence between “Brecht’s and Ören’s realist aesthetics” (67), the active use of Brecht’s formal techniques by Turkish authors, disrupts the passive, unquestioning absorption of a narrative as it supports critical analyses of the narrative material. Gezen’s innovative perspective on the “Turkish” in “Turkish-German,” her analysis of “past practices and their relationship to the present” (108), Reviews 103 provides the reader with a new and comprehensive picture of Ören, Özdamar, and others in Turkish-German artist communities. Her notes, bibliography, list of archival documents, and index are very helpful with further inquiry, and photos of actors and performances add interesting visuals of theaters and their artists. Webster University St. Louis Paula Hanssen