Theater Department Students Flourish at Bilkent


Fourth year students from the Faculty of Music and Performing Arts premiered the play Zoraki Tabip on February 4 in the FMPA Theater Hall. The performance is their senior project.

Zoraki Tabip was adapted from Molière's 1666 Le Médecin Malgré Lui, a Doctor in Spite of Himself or Mock Doctor. Prominent intellectual and politician Ahmet Vefik Paşa (1823-1891) translated the play into Turkish during the Tanzimat Period of the Ottoman Empire, about 150 years ago. Beginning in 1839, structural changes in the Ottoman government allowed for secularization and the adoption of an imperial, unified Ottoman culture. As part of this program of unification, Turkey first established a national theater and drew on the theater of Europe. Paşa, who translated all of Molière into Turkish, led the national theater.

The comic play is about a woman who is abused by her husband. In order to get revenge, she tells everybody that her husband is a very good doctor, even curing the most unfortunate sicknesses, but that he will only treat people who first give him a beating. Molière wrote the play to lampoon popular 17th-century medical practices as nonsense, and the Ottoman version intended to encourage movement toward science and away from folk medicine through a setting that most villagers would recognize.

The performance opened with a musical introduction of the cast. Students from the Faculty of Music provided the musical accompaniment. The set staging was as lush as Molière and Paşa intended, with costumes made in the fashion of the 19th-century Ottoman Empire. The performances were excellent, and the actors' comic timing was exact.

The play reminds us that Bilkent is equally committed to the arts as it is to science and plays a central role in educating new generations of gifted actors.

Additional performances will be held on February 7 and 14 at 8 p.m. and February 11 and 18 at 6 p.m., also at the FMPA Theater Hall. To show your support of Bilkent's fine theater, you can purchase tickets though www.mybilet.com or from the FMPA Theater. All performances are in Turkish.

Choreographer: Deniz Çığ
Costume design: Sevcan Akıncı
Lighting: Yılmaz Ertekin
Music: Dağhan Doğu
Directing Assistants: Özgür Avcu, B. Erdi Mamikoğlu, Nehir Demirel

Cast:
Eray Cezayiroğlu
Berkay Yiğitaslan
K. Murat Demir
Taylan Uysal
Kemal Doğantan

ÖzgürAvcu
F. Ece Koroğlu
B. Erdi Mamikoğlu
S. Gökçe Erinç
S. Cansu Saka

İrem Esen (MAN/III) contributed to this article.