Communicating difficult pasts in performing arts: disko 5 No'lu sen balık değilsin ki

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1819849 (Table of Contents)

This thesis explores the enactment of the collective past and memory in performing arts and questions the political and daily limits and possibilities of such enactment in present-day Turkey. To this end, it delves into two contemporary performance pieces from the alternative theater scene in Istanbul: Disko 5 No’lu by DestAR-Theatre and Sen Balık Değilsin ki by Çıplak Ayaklar Kumpanyası (ÇAK). In the thesis, the works in question are interrogated in terms of their ability to open up new and deepened understanding of collective past without being trapped in representational schemes where words stand for an authentic meaning, performance stands for a text, and thus all the theatrical elements are instrumentalized as the vessels of an unreachable, absolute truth about the past.