Keşanlı Ali’s Epic Tale on TAC Stage
The culmination of this year’s endeavors to excel in theater and performance arts for the TAC Turkish Drama Club was the staging of, "Keşanlı Ali Epic". The preparation for the production of this classic two-act comedy, written by Haldun Taner, took months and provided the opportunity for students to use their experiences from the Bursa drama workshop. For the first time, students - two of the club's seasoned members - were in the director’s chair: Selin Seçen and İnci Ovat with technical support provided to them by the club’s advisors, Mr. Önder Şit and Mikail İncir. The club students, who have built on the dedication and skills of the previous years, experienced once again the joy of working and creating together. At the end of the play, they were rewarded by a standing ovation.
The following thoughts of Kutay İleri, one of the club’s performers, will give a clear idea about the process:
We are about to complete another season as TAC’s Turkish Drama Club and rehearsed for the play “Keşanlı Ali”, having gathered memories that we will never forget along the way. The legendary team gathered in the beginning of your year, and we grew during the year as the younger students from Prep joined us. The new members of the team soon adapted to this warm environment and reflected the team motto: "sincerity in friendship, completion in acting". Maybe that was the main reason that we were able to stage a full-fledged play in a considerably short time.
Since we had duties on many special days in the first semester, it took us quite a long time to fully concentrate on our play. In the meantime, we organized a club field trip, as we did in previous years, to Bursa. It was one of our most entertaining trips, and of course it was filled with memories that none of us could ever forget. Two days of creative drama and acting training by the Contemporary Drama Association was one of the most rewarding trainings we have ever attended. During the trip, we also had the opportunity to work on the characters that we planned to bring to life as the play and casting was decided before the trip. I believe that this opportunity added a lot to our acting skills. After a very productive and entertaining trip, our second semester rehearsals started, and we started to memorize our parts.
By transferring all our energy into the play, we made great progress in the second semester by starting to work on stage. The whole team dedicated time and energy with great sacrifices, but Selin and İnci, despite being in IB and their senior year, should be especially commended for showing a great sense of responsibility and dedicating a huge amount of time. I personally struggled with balancing all may responsibilities as I am also an IB student, and I had to stay for rehearsals in a period when I had a great deal of academic committments. At times, I was desperate too. However, with the motivation and determination of the team to produce the best play possible, we reached the point where we were ready to bring ‘Keşanlı Ali Epic’ to the TAC stage, and our excitement began to build. During the last week, we made efforts to complete the costumes and set decorations, and on the last day, we had our final rehearsal with finishing touches such as light, costume and decor changes. On the day of the play, I was quite anxious and feeling stressed. Despite the excitement that existed amongst the whole team, I believe that we staged a successful play. As a matter of fact, we got very positive feedback from the audience to support this. I feel happy to have been able to act in such a play before moving to my senior year and fortunate to have the friendships with the members of this team. I would like to thank the club advisors, our teachers, Mr. Önder Şit and Mr. Mikail İncir, for their dedication and continued support.