The Prisoner of Second Avenue - İkinci Caddenin Mahkumu Sivas Devlet Tiyatrosu Sivas, Turcia (Anatolia), December 12th, 2005 Scene design : Zeki Sarayoğlu Costumes: Berna Cömert Music: Kemal Günüç Lights: Kazım Öztürk Choreography: Yener Turan Directors Assistants: Ulviye Bursa and Özkan Gezgin Actors: MEL Arif Yavuz EDNA Banu Manioğlu HARRY Cevat Duman PEARL Aylin Gürsoy JESSIE Menekşe Bendeş PAULINE Gülçin Çakir, RADIO VOICE/TV SHOW MAN Kerem Yücel STAN JENNINGS, AMERICAN EAGLE Mehmet Demiralp Dancers: Gülin Ersoy , Ulaş Ersoy, Cebrail Esen, Kerem Yücel Director: Camelia Hâncu
We are all astonished by the miracle of the civilization, impressed by scientific discoveries, by the art revolution, by the virtual reality which, step by step, takes the place of the real life. The time loses its sense, the time is compressed and at night the world is completely different. Its like an astronomic engine, like an inertia which nobody can stop. All of us agree to each other, but in the same time the balance of the life is destroyed. And in the same time all of us are looking for remaining islands to escape from the society, we want to clean up our brains, to listen the grass growing and the wind blowing
In my opinion, the human being, the engine of the society, is a victim of a mutual agreement with the system in which is living. And there is just one mistake: to consider the life as a hypothesis and not as a consequence of our actions.
After I read this play I was thinking about Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Chaplins Modern Times. Each of them presented us in different ways some theories about the madness of the society, about losing control and measure, about exaggerations of the human beings. Neil Simon takes a couple, a family (the nucleus of the modern society) and put it under a magnifying glass. Do they have any opportunity to escape from the societys cage? I think it doesnt matter if its a communist, democratic or a capitalist system; we should try to keep the rightness as human beings.
At the 14th floor of a building from New York City Downtown, a black humorous drama takes place - drama of a man who loses his job and starts to feel the pressure of the modern society. Mel, the main character, and Edna, his wife, change step by step into prisoners of an apartment, as a matter of fact prisoners of a mad society which lost its humanity. Both of them are transforming in caged animals with no chance to exit. The Prisoner of Second Avenue is a black comedy full of the absurdity, the insensitivity, the paradox and the cruelty of the modern world.
Text by Camelia Hâncu, theatre director |
