It was a genuine pleasure having coffee with Wine and Halva’s playwright and director, Deniz Başar and Art Babayants, respectively. The title of Başar’s script comes from a poem by Arkadaş Zekai Özgür, a queer, Turkish communist who ultimately died in his mid-twenties after being arrested and brutalized by police. Translated to English, the poem is titled “Hello, My Dear,” or “Hello, Darling.”

Deniz Başar: His work was published after he died. And this is one of his most famous poems. He’s a communist but he refers to God, he equals God to the cats he loves... [and that] his mother loves both cats and God. He says, “I like drinking wine with halva” and that's where it comes from. And it's a queer thing in its suggestion because that's not a traditional thing anywhere. It's like suggesting that you like drinking wine with a chocolate cake. But then you actually think about it, and it might make sense. It actually makes sense. You know, with wine and halva. And I was so ennobled by this poem for a very long time.

So the police brutality wasn't actually against his queer identity. It was against his left-wing student identity. Something that is philosophically interesting is that in contemporary Turkey…in left wing circles—especially the older generations--feel ashamed with the stigma put on this young poet because he was queer.”

Because of the inspiration, the three of us talked at length about LGBTQIA+ rights in Turkey. Being from Atlanta, which is in the southern part of the U.S., I have intimate knowledge of the evangelical church’s influence on the effort to roll back rights for the queer community and women.

Me: How much does religion play a part in the stigmatization?

Deniz: I feel like there is a lot of misunderstanding about the Muslim majority countries in North America. I’m not here to suggest we’re more liberal than you think, but there is allowance for homosociality. Because of gender segregation, [this behavior] is more normalized. The problems start not with lewd actions, but because communities organize to demand rights which is more about legal structures and the state. It’s not cool to be a homophobe in left-wing circles which is like, “We got there.”

Me: I haven’t seen the production yet. I understand there are a range of performance styles and approaches. What are the elements?

Art Babayants: Everything. The play itself is very complex, but I think [for] the production we took that [complexity] to a different level, and we did our best to fight against realism and naturalism, because that's what I often see in English Canadian theatre. There’s this obsession with like, it needs to be relatable, authentic, realistic, and I think the production is a mix of a drinking party, standup comedy, philosophical debate, puppet theater and traditional “meddah” theater, which is spelled M-E-D-D-A-H [as opposed to “meta”].

Me: Meddah? Can you give me a description of this?

Deniz: It was an [Turkish] optimal performance. It's a solo performance. Basically, there's one narrator who comes into a coffee shop who tells a comedic story and [acts out] the story, and they have two tools like a white handkerchief and a stick, and they use these two items in versatile ways to create different characters.

Art: We introduce a style at the beginning and the audience thinks it’s going to be in that style. Within the first five minutes that style is subverted. We expose the theatricality. We immediately say, “We’re in the theater, we’re performing this… and then we go back to the style and then the next scene starts and there’s something else in it. Every new scene suggests something new. Because the styles are constantly changing, the audience is never bored. They are challenged intellectually, and the theatricality of the piece helps enormously to go through the complexity of the philosophical discussion.

If it [were] done in a very realistic style, I think it would have been impossible to watch. Deniz wrote a lot of complex stage directions—not for me, but for the standard director who thinks they need to do everything realistically. There is another element at the end, which I can’t reveal now. So, it’s not just all of those elements, there’s more.

Me: I can’t wait! Tell me a little more about how you borrow from departures from realism.

Deniz: For me, these styles are more natural to me than many writers in North America, because theater in Turkey is very metatheatrical…constantly commenting on the medium of theater. There are a lot of creative theater artists in Turkey that do not like the fourth wall which, to me, is kind of imported from the western theater paradigm. In Turkish theater there’s more of a dialogic interaction which creates a democratic space of discussion that can also hold emotions. It has to be functional; it has to be pragmatic and it has to be about ideas.

Me: What themes surround the work and who is the audience?

Art: I would say labor. Because friendship is labor. There are two levels though. In the play itself, two people from completely different cultures, knowing very little about each other and each other’s cultures. They put a lot of labor into creating a beautiful friendship. There are five sections. The five scenes are about learning, unlearning, changing, being courageous, and accepting each other. …but also fighting sometimes and eventually changing.

Deniz: That’s one side of it, but on the other one is the actual labor that we are putting into this production as friends. It’s not just me and the director. It’s a very large group of people. Four years ago, during the first wave of the pandemic, we were outside in public parks rehearsing--not legally, but semi-illegally. The audience is for young people who are in search of themselves in this complicated world…and want to build communities to change the world.

I wrote this for North America. That’s why I wrote it in English. The time I spent here was transformative, for good and bad. A lot of people were seeing me a certain way, which is fine at the initial encounter because you don’t have to know everything about everybody. But as the relationships got deeper, I realized…that they had this idea about you and whatever you do, whatever you try to show them with good intentions, they will not allow it to change them. I wrote this play because I was, like, let me tell you how I see you. Like you have been telling me all these years about how you see me and where you put me, let me tell you how I see you.

Art: Also, I would like Montreal French and English artistic directors and theater directors to come and see the work. And it's been really hard to bring them in, because they often look everywhere except here, you know. And the assumption is that we just don't have the talent. We have the talent.

Performance

The story is about two friends from vastly different backgrounds. A college-aged Muslim woman, and a gay white man. They must work together to find a deeper understanding of their friendship, and of each other.

Upon arriving, I noticed the space is given prominence in the work, as the audience is seated around the performance area. This makes the audience feel very much part of the performance, with people sitting at small tables in a single row. Before the show there is a sense of performativity as audience members are wholly aware of each other. These social performances are even commented on by the actors during the play.

The points of view, as promised, are challenging and although the socio-political ideologies and themes are not new to us liberal folk, the perspective of the writer is, in some ways, disruptive, especially as it does not seek audience approval. It is theater to embolden, push, cajole, and if it offends, so be it.

Deniz: I think some audience members might enjoy it enormously, others would be challenged by it, and others might say, ‘this is not why we go to the theater.’ It's completely fine. We are asking the audience to make a choice…choices, with the play. Like, I think there's not going to be much of a middle ground. Like, people would probably either like it very much or really not like it. Or maybe they'll change, like, their opinions over time. I don't know. I know we, as a team, are making strong choices in this play to push people to make strong choices. After the first act, there were a couple of empty seats. Presumably because of the positionality of the lead actor did not sit well with them. For a production like this, to artists and writers pushing boundaries, this is a badge of honor.

The trio of actors work meticulously to navigate the space, relationships, styles, and genres with confidence. Transitions between scenes vacillated between seamless and purposefully jarring. The shifts from Brechtian influenced scenes to scenes built on devising principles, to realism, to committed ritualistic “happening now in the space”, to movement, to dance, to “what was that?”, might seem strenuous, but all three performers exhibited high proficiency of the “everything, everywhere, all at once” concept. And it looked like they were having fun.

I definitely do not want to give anything away, but there is a moment that I found spiritual, communal, and silly. As this was a combination of theatrical elements I have never seen, I found it compelling.

Afterthoughts

This play is not for unsophisticated theater audiences. Not because of the mosaic of performance theories, but because it will make you think. Looking at the etymology of the word “entertainment,” I would not say it is that. The work does not occupy thought, but rather concretizes, sparks, or sets fire to positionality.

There was a short discussion about social masks, à la Erving Goffman. After sitting with the work, processing it, having my little journey of being endeared, annoyed, frustrated, then angry, I found my way to an authenticity of thought. Just as the playwright intended there were moments that offended and angered me as a white presenting man. This was, after all, a turning of the tables. As the writer said, “let me tell you what I think of you.” My social masks on socio-political ideas dropped. There I was. But emotions shift and then we are just left with ourselves to examine. Ultimately you ask why you felt the way you did, where it came from, and what to do about it next, with clarity. This is the theater I came for. This is the theater I received. Again, not for unsophisticated audiences.

Deniz: Okay, what I really want to say…my burning inside…is that I want a different world. I want a different world where we can, all of us can, communicate better and have a fairer share in resources. And basic human rights are distributed more rightfully. And I think, like, every single action that we do as artists, as scientists, as all people, can contribute to that or can choose not to contribute to that.

Wine & Halva - A Sophisticated Mosaic

Performance

Afterthoughts

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