NORA NÛRE

The jury's
conclusion

Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House treats, amongst other themes, the freedom to have your own opinions and to make your own decisions regardless of a person’s sex and/or gender. The Theatre Painted Bird works in an artistic way with different topics related to both women’s issues and ethnic minority’s rights in Turkey today. One of their main arguments to stage A Doll’s House is that their performance will be of great importance to the contribution of the oppression experienced by the Kurdish community and especially by the Kurdish women. In this regard, the performance will address important issues like emancipation, subjectivity and independence of Kurdish women in Turkey today.

About the project

The number of classical theatre productions in Kurdish is limited in Turkey today. This project, “Nora Nûre”, aims to stage Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in Kurdish and show the performance both in Turkey and in Oslo, Norway. According to Theatre Painted Bird this will be the first production of an Ibsen play in Kurdish in Turkey. The target audience in Turkey will be people who have little access to theatre of both political, economic or geographic reasons, or because of barriers in language. In Oslo the target audience will be the Kurdish migrant community.
In addition to the performance, Theatre Painted Bird wants to publish a book about Ibsen’s life and plays, and the full text of Nora in Turkish and Kurdish.

Jale Karabekir, born in Istanbul, Turky, in 1975, is a dramaturgist and the artistic director and founder of Theatre Painted Bird in Istanbul, Turkey. She is educated within dramaturgy and theatre criticism and has a MA in sociology within the topic “Performance As a Strategy for Women’s Liberation” from the Istanbul University.

Tiyatro Boyali Kuş (Theatre Painted Bird) is a professional feminist theatre established in 2000. The theatre is a member of the International Organization of the Theatre of the Oppressed, and is organized in the Magdalene Project, Network of Women in Contemporary Theatre. The theatre has a feminist policy. Theatre Painted Bird prefers at least 75 per cent of their staff members to be female. They provide paid and unpaid internship opportunities for women and support other feminist and queer performance companies in Turkey. They also organize theatre workshops with women and the Kurdish youth and children.