Turks, Fire | Germany
Playwright Özlem Özgül Dündar
Photographer Dincer Gücyeter
Playwright: Özlem Özgül Dündar
Translator: Neil Blackadder
Director: Anna Bahow
Partner:
Synopsis: When a residential house is engulfed in flames five people are killed, three children and two women. The perpetrators are youths from the neighbourhood. The name of the small town is soon known nationwide thanks to a flurry of media reports. But the nation’s attention soon turns elsewhere to other, more pressing issues. Yet for the survivors and victims of the arson attack that fateful night will never end. The mother who leapt from a window cradling her child trying to protect the baby with her own body tells her story over and over, detailing the moment of her death. The mother of one of the perpetrators talks about the silence that enveloped her home, of her inkling that something had happened, of her doubts about her son’s guilt. A female relative who survived the fire sees the flames every day, feels the heat and smells the smoke. Each person is trapped in their memory and pain yet searches for a way to talk about what happened, yearns to meet other people and find a way to communicate.
The 1993 arson attack in Solingen is the starting point for Turks. Fire. Writing with great sensitivity and precision, Özlem Özgül Dündar searches for a language to describe those harrowing events that permits all the various perspectives a space to exist. The resulting play retains a painful relevance for today’s social and political climate.
Özlem Özgül Dündar was born in 1983 in Solingen. She writes poetry, prose, essays and performs with “Kanak Attak Leipzig” as well as the “Ministry of Compassion”. She is also active as a publisher and translator. She won the 2015 Retzhof Drama Prize. Recently, she was awarded the Kelag Prize at the Klagenfurt literary festival as well as the 2018 Rolf Dieter Brinkmann Scholarship. Her volume of poetry tugging thoughts (2018) was published by Elif Verlag.
Neil Blackadder translates drama and prose from German and French, specializing in contemporary theatre. He has contributed many translations to IVP, including of plays by Lukas Bärfuss, Mishka Lavigne, and Ewald Palmetshofer that were later produced in cities including Chicago, London, and New York. Neil has received grants from the NEA, PEN, and the Howard Foundation, and he’s Translations Editor for Another Chicago Magazine. In Spring 2023, Neil will be the Translator in Residence at Princeton University.