French director to visit city

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

French theater director Emmanuel Daumas will be in Istanbul to direct a play at Kadir Has University April 28 and 29. Daumas will stage three short plays for the launch of Istanbul’s first annual New Theater Festival, with the support of the French Cultural Institute.

The theme of the first New Theater Festival is “catastrophe.” The festival will host workshops managed by Mark Levitas, Okan Urun, Sibel Arslan Yeşilay and Beliz Güçbilmez.

A total of 22 people have been attending workshops since December, preparing to work with the playwrights. Three plays from the workshops were selected to be featured as part of the festival’s main program. Six other plays will be performed as readings, with the support of Turkish directors.

Daumas, renowned throughout France and Europe for his directorial resumé, graduated from the Conservatoire de Marseille and has made a name for himself as both an actor and director. Daumas has directed plays by Paul Claudel and Jean Genet, as well as a theatrical adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s “The Waves.” In 2010 he directed Michel Fau at the Theatre Rond-Point in Paris, France.