By Heidi Trautmann

Within the framework of the 3rd Beşparmak Theatre Festival organised by the Çatalköy Municipality the “Güzelyurt Municipality City Theatre” was invited to take part with a play written and directed by Bekir Kara.  

Bekir Kara, I have known him for many years, lives and works close to Güzelyurt, writes books and theatre plays,  loves to play old instruments in a house on top of the hills overlooking the vast plains where Güzelyurt lies, and not far away the Trodoos mountains. He was born in Paphos. Already as a youngster at the age of 17 years he had written his first play ‘The Scent of the Earth’: He told me: “I was interested in all which happened around me, peoples’ lives, the problems they had, the comical situations which arose around these problems, human weaknesses – you know, everyday life in a Turkish Cypriot village.” All his plays – altogether 30 of them – circle around this kind of topic, situation comedies, I would call them. In the past, when there was no television and hardly any other entertainment, public themes and problems were often the subject of theatre plays to raise people’s awareness and to hold a mirror in front of them.

His new play which we had the pleasure to see in Çatalköy on March 29, is of this same genre:

A Cypriot family lives in Germany. Mom and the two daughters of 3 and 5 years of age travel to Cyprus for a holiday but on the highway Lefkoşa-Girne they have an accident, and mom and the elder daughter die. The younger one is taken to hospital by a stranger as it was a question of life and death. Dad went to Cyprus to do his sad duty to bury the dead but cannot find his younger daughter; she has disappeared. He decides to stay in Cyprus, sets up a holiday village and has a slight hope that one day he will find his young daughter.  About 15 years later his advert for a secretary is answered and a young woman enters the vestibule of the hotel, and he thinks immediately, this could be my daughter…. Complications arise, misunderstandings, comical situations, but in the end everybody is happy, the daughter is found.

The cast, all amateur actors and actresses, in their real life working in other professions, have dedicated their free time to the theatre, most of them - I read from their short CVs - are with Bekir Kara for ten years and more and some have been awarded prizes for roles they played.

They did their parts very well. Hüsnü Kargili; Hasret Kolçu, Jale Dinarli, Saziye Numanoğlu, Mehmet Çangar, Hasan Siperçi and Seylari Zeybek (Light and Sound).

After the play, Derman Atik thanked them all for their participation and hopefully all will come together again next year.

Bekir Kara explained, they would dismantle the stage scenery, take the decoration under their arms, bring it to the Belediye Bus waiting outside the tent, all that in 30 minutes and would drive home and celebrate a little among themselves, and I am sure, they do that with the feeling of satisfaction to have done some really good work.