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Artistic director Müzede Sahne – Oyunlarla Dönüşüm
(Stage at the Museum – Transformation Through Play), Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Istanbul, 2026
Oyunlarla Dönüşüm is a performing arts program curated and artistically directed by Ayşe Draz, presented at Sakıp Sabancı Museum as the tenth edition of the Müzede Sahne series. Held from 27 to 30 August 2026, and in dialogue with the museum’s Yoko Ono exhibition, the program placed the transformative power of play at its centre. Turning the museum’s garden and various spaces into stages, it looked at moments when the spectator becomes a participant, the space becomes a stage, and the letter becomes an act of resistance. It invited audiences to see, hear, think, and act together.

The main stage opened with Bir Kadının Kavgaları ve Dönüşümleri, a Moda Sahnesi production starring Onur Ünsal. Based on Édouard Louis’s text, it traced a mother’s twenty years of domestic servitude and her quiet break from it, as seen through her son’s eyes. The next evening brought Yıldız, a coming-of-age story about a budgerigar who flees the warmth of its family, gets lost, changes and finds itself in a vast world. Şatonun Altında followed, a grotesque comedy in which Lecoq’s bouffons rewrote Shakespeare’s Macbeth through two women looking up from the underworld. The program closed with 9/8'lik Kıyamet, in which a storyteller replays the same apocalypse every night to the beat of his darbuka, until one game changes everything.

The garden program extended this thread of transformation. In Şule Ateş’s Şâzân Meclisi, mythological figures once held sacred and later turned into monsters, from Şahmeran to Lilith, met audiences through body masks, dance, and video mapping. Melih Kıraç’s Yakın Zamanın Kaybı, performed by Şiva Canbazoğlu, seeped into different corners of the museum and took on the rhythms of each space. Internationally renowned choreographer Begüm Erciyas’s Letters from Attica turned audiences from listeners into voices. Participants read aloud fragments of letters by Sam Melville, imprisoned at Attica for anti-Vietnam War bombings, and built a shared narrative of resistance and solidarity.
 Once again Fuayede Karşılaşmalar invited audiences to gather before each main stage performance for intimate conversations with translator Ayberk Erkay, Assoc. Prof. Zeynep Günsür Yüceil and Dr. Özlem Hemiş of Kadir Has University’s Theatre Department, and Gülin Dede, who offered context and impressions to open up new ways of approaching each work.. Children’s programming included Mitolojik Hikâyeler by Anuşka’nın Atölyesi, which blended the ortaoyunu and puppetry traditions into adventures of hope and love. Workshops expanded the sensory scope of the program further. Oğuz Öner’s Atlı Köşk’ün Ses Manzaraları turned listening from a habit back into an experience. Yaz Güvendi of Kuş Kolektifi and musician-composer Akın Orbay led a birdwatching tour around the museum and wove the birds’ songs into a collective digital composition. Homemade Aromaterapi’s workshops treated scent as a site of encounter and transformation, where a smell could begin something new rather than only recall the past.


For the brochure, click here.

From the press:
Apaçık Radyo
Artful Living
Artistry of Good
ArtTV
CNN Türk
Dünya Gazetesi
Gazete Oksijen
Gazete Pencere
Hürriyet Cumartesi
KAFA+
Medyascope
Medya Takip
OGGUSTO
T24
T24 Podcast
theMagger
Unlimited
YouTube

Photos: Canberk Ulusan


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© AYŞE DRAZ, 2026