Anniversary show — 98th Year of the Republic of Türkiye
Volkswagen Arena, Istanbul · October 29, 2021
Anniversary show — 98th Year of the Republic of Türkiye
Volkswagen Arena, Istanbul · October 29, 2021
For the 98th anniversary of the Republic of Türkiye, we staged Republic Fire for the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality: the founding story told in three chapters — a childhood, a struggle, a beginning — performed live on an arena floor turned into a single projection canvas.
A STORY READ ALOUD TO A NATION.
The story opens with a boy. Before the uniform, before the name the world would learn, there is a child — and the first chapter follows him from that childhood into the years of a young officer finding his direction. The arena floor carried the imagery under the performers’ feet: maps, landscapes and memory, projected at full scale. The boy grows into Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
History has already measured the man. In 1981, on the centenary of his birth, UNESCO’s member states passed a resolution — unanimously — declaring it the Atatürk Year, naming him “the leader of the first struggle against colonialism and imperialism.” The show doesn’t argue his stature; it starts before it, with a child.
Client Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB)
Event 98th Anniversary of the Republic of Türkiye
Venue Volkswagen Arena, Istanbul
Date October 29, 2021
Scope Story, direction & production · Floor projection mapping · Fire sculpture · Live performance design
Music Rahman Altın
Cast Ebru Cündübeyoğlu, Fikret Yıldırım Urağ, Mert Turak
The second chapter tells the War of Independence — but not as a battle re-enactment. An actor sits with a book, children gather around him, and the struggle is read aloud the way a grandfather would tell it. The hardest years arrive as a story told to children, while the floor beneath them comes alive with what the words describe. The chapter closes with a single gesture: a national archer draws, releases, and one arrow lights the symbolic republic fire on a sculpture designed for the night.
The third chapter begins in 1923, with what Atatürk’s republic actually inherited: a worn-out country, and people who decided to build anyway. Farmers, nurses, teachers, workers — the dancers carry the rebuilding, body by body, until the floor turns red under a flag.
One night, one floor — actors, dancers and children sharing it, an original symphonic score by Rahman Altın, full-scale projection under every step, and a fire sculpture built to be lit by a single arrow.
