Photo by Maria Baranova-Suzuki
This investigative performance follows Ayşe Deniz Karacagil, a young Turkish woman arrested during the Gezi protests of 2013 and sentenced to a maximum of 98 years in prison for wearing a red scarf. Karacagil subsequently escaped across the Turkish border to join the Kurdish resistance movement. Maps for a War Tourist layers original research to question the nature of truth and the allure of the real, while tracing connections between recent events in Turkey and the U.S., between non-violent protest and armed revolution, and between a revolutionary and those bearing witness to her story.
The rising cross-cultural theater company Sister Sylvester uses documentary techniques and then reimagines the real through fiction. Mount Tremper Arts is presenting Maps for a War Tourist, their current play-in-development before it goes on to premiere at Dixon Place (NYC) in June. In one recent piece, director Kathyrn Hamilton recast Genet’s The Maids, putting professional housekeepers alongside the professional actors on stage, interweaving their personal stories into the piece.
“This always intriguing company continues to create unexpected, challenging work that approaches story and ideas from multiple angles and generates a thrill with unusual juxtapositions.” [Praise for They Are Gone But Here I Must Remain]—American Theatre
“The refreshing result (half-documentary, half-Genet) is chaotic, but it’s also productive and genuinely subversive; Hamilton gives us the kind of mess you learn from making.” — TimeOut New York
About the Artists
Sister Sylvester is a New York and Istanbul-based company using documentary techniques in parallel with fiction to explore relationships of power. Inviting disruption into both their process and performances, the company looks for dissonance and difficulty in text, image, and sound.
Kathryn Hamilton is a performance maker based in New York and Istanbul. She is the founder and director of the New York-based company Sister Sylvester. Recent productions include They Are Gone at The Public Theater for Under The Radar's Incoming! series; Welcome at Alt Bomonti gallery in Istanbul; The Maids’ The Maids at Abrons Arts Center; The Fall at The Park Avenue Armory, as part of the Under Construction Series; Dead Behind These Eyes (NYT critic’s pick) at Sing Sing Karaoke; Science Fiction at Köşe. Her work has been reviewed by New York Times, New Yorker, Time Out, Village Voice, American Theater Magazine, Performance Art Journal, Hyperallergic, Culturebot, among other publications. She has received grants from LMCC, BAC, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and has been a resident at The Public Theater's Devised Theater Working Group; Salem Art Works; Park Avenue Armory; Flux Factory, Queens; and Spread Art, Detroit, among others. She is currently a part of Lift Festival's Urban Heat program for social practice artists. She has taught or mentored students at Columbia University, NYU and Boğaziçi, Istanbul; and she spent the years 2011-13 in disguise as a french diplomat in New York.
Performance Program