For the next three Wednesdays, students from the Department of Performing Arts will be staging the play “The Madman and the Nun,” a theater of the absurd piece by Polish writer Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz.
Written in 1923 and first staged in 1924, “The Madman and the Nun” is dedicated to “all the madmen of the world” and explores the tyranny of society over the individual as well as the boundaries of sanity. The play can be seen as an absurdist black comedy in which science, religion and the state form a totalitarian alliance to bring about enforced happiness and social tranquility by means of psychiatric confinement.
The play will be performed in English, with performances to take place on February 8, 15 and 22, at 8 p.m. in the FMPA Chamber Theater. Tickets can be obtained from ticket.bilkent.edu.tr.
Daniel Irizarry, visiting assistant professor in the Department of Performing Arts, will direct the play. Members of the cast are Ahmet Kılıç, Berk Cem Göksel, Melisa Berberoğlu and Naz Göktan; musicians for the play are Kaan Aygün, Özge Erdem, Kamran Hamdiev and Billur Ongun. Lighting design is by Yılmaz Ertekin, poster design by Mehmet Nebi Savcı, costumes by Selvi Şaşmaz and stage design by Özlem Gezgin.