The questions that guide my work include: What does it mean to co-author reality with strangers? How do institutional and cultural expectations shape the way we witness, remember, empathize, or act? And, critically, what kinds of frameworks allow people to explore these questions without needing theatrical literacy?
Silent Questions
Methodologically, each of my projects unfolds uniquely, informed by a question, collected materials, research, collaborators, the intended performance site, and more. In Silent Questions (2025), the catalyst was collected response writings from visitors to Suzanne Lacy's exhibition “Birlikte/Together” at Sabancı Museum for International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The responses explored themes of violence, hope, body, and power. To prepare, I conducted a thorough examination of Suzanne Lacy's work. Then, reviewing the responses led to research on violence against women in Türkiye, meetings with experts, and visits to the museum to observe visitors and how they moved and interacted with the exhibition. Then, an incubation phase in which I mapped the conceptual terrain and imagined a destination while remaining ready to abandon it. I build clear frameworks inside which experimentation is permitted to fail.
In Silent Questions, the collected material, research, the space where the performance would take place, November 25th (International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women), and Lacy’s exhibition all contributed to the piece's framework. Lacy’s exhibition employed yellow signage (the color that dominated the exhibition), with black text spelling out questions both in Turkish and English that appeared in the responses. The questions were challenging, such as “Is violence gender-neutral?” or “What does family mean, is it a safe place or hidden violence?” Signage led up to the stage, which was eye level with the audience. In the exhibition, Lacy set up 3 intimate tables, which I filled with three performers each. I dressed each performer in black and had them wear a yellow scarf. This integrated them with the exhibition and also worked to distinguish them from visitors. They took turns speaking the questions derived from the private, anonymous responses, embodying the text. The stage was at audience level, sharing a physical level with the audience, and alluding to their equal importance as participants and thus, co-creators. I let the questions resonate and hang in the large space. At only 25 minutes, the performance elicited a surprisingly strong reaction from the audience. Many people became emotional and were very engaged. For me, this was a success. I could feel the audience transform into something more sensitive, more awakened. The “success” is what the work reveals about the social systems it touches, in this case.
panorama radio
In my collaborative work, connection arrives early: performers, dramaturgs, musicians, and designers enter as co-thinkers, even co-creating the catalyst. My work explores how artistic imagination might unify individuals as members of a larger community. I often work with theatre directors, sound artists, and choreographers. This is true for my project panorama radio, which was performed in 2 countries and involves "participants" accompanied by facilitators, entering private cars of other participants and going on a “joyride” on public streets. This work was made in collaboration with Marlin de Haan, my German counterpart. We came to the concept together. Panorama for the view from your car and radio to represent the mix of recorded text, music, and ambient sounds that are heard in a car. The project explored dialogue in private space and expectations of the “public” and what they contribute. The car’s intimate setting also aligns with my interest in keeping the stage and audience on a level plane (physically and conceptually). In fact, in this case, the audience participants were literally in the driver’s seat. We encountered the audience as participants and collaborators, defying set categories and scrutinizing the concepts of public and private space. This collaboration, at the same time, has become an encounter between two cultures working through their differences to create a polyphonic resonance. In exploring topics related to public space, we observed how people in Türkiye and Germany related to the work. We intentionally avoided “typical” conversations between Turks and Germans and instead interacted despite differences to challenge easy assumptions. Hopefully, making space for personal transformations.
Live Arts, by nature, is process-driven; a methodology allowing the final form and context to be shaped by the process is crucial. There is no preset destination. A key proposition in my practice is that performance can function as a rehearsal site for empathy. I do not mean empathy as sentimentality or identification, but as a form of trained perception; the ability to attend, to locate nuance, to hold contradiction without resolution. What distinguishes my practice is not only the culture-spanning elements but also the way it draws the audience into participation. Performance can rehearse forms of living that are otherwise impossible, implausible, or forbidden. I do not ask audiences to watch a representation of community; I ask them to become one, briefly, and to experience what that proximity affords. My work takes seriously the idea that empathy is not inherited, grief is not linear, memory is not private, and participation is not neutral. Performance, when treated as a laboratory for social imagination, can generate the conditions under which these complexities can be held. In my work, performance is not simply a space in which things are shown, but a space in which new modes of attention, relation, and care can be practiced. That is the world I am constructing, one performance at a time.