Blog

Making of Zahhak During Covid-19

by Engin Ozsahin (Music Director)

“Some time in late December, 2019 sitting in a warm Boston pub with members of Boston Experimental Theatre, celebrating an intensive and exhilarating ‘IsNotThatAnymore‘ performance, Vahdat Yeganeh (founder of BETC) asked me if I’d be interested in being the musical director of his new project called ‘Zahhak’. Now, sitting in my Istanbul room, listening to Sam Harris’ Interludes, and three weeks away from premier of Zahhak, I wanted to share a short journal of how we (as in the creators; Vahdat, Donya and myself) managed to come to this point, from December 2019 to March 2021.” Read More

On The Practice of the Dialogue of Civilizations

By Jared Wright

“M(O)ther will be the 5th performance/experiment BETC has undertaken under the “auspiciously” named project “The Dialogue of Civilizations”—a name that invokes and indicts the grand thoughts of huge swaths of humanity.  In my imagination the phrase conjures the pillars of our temples and minarets of our mosques bellowing at each other, “You are wrong!”  The image holds within it the underlying assumption of all civilizations—that they are bigger than us,  greater than us.  It feels as though the titans themselves must wrestle with each other to keep such a dialogue in play—Gilgamesh and Prometheus grappling on the fault lines of tectonic plates” Read More…

Cathartic Cruelty

By Jared Wright

  “Tragedy,… produces its effect even without movement; its quality is apparent from a mere reading… It offers verisimilitude when read no less than when performed.” Read More 

Beer and Dialogue Among Civilizations

By Ben Howe

   “Perhaps six months or so before Vahdat Yeganeh proposed his Dialogue Among Civilizations he and I had spent an evening together listening to music, waxing philosophical, and sharing Belgian beer” Read More…