Exiled Lives on the Stage: When Storytellers become the Story

Abstract

In this article, I reflect on some of the observations I have made in recent months as part of my Marie Curie project, entitled Exiled Lives on the Stage (agreement No: 893827). I organized two panels on 29 September 2022, in Berlin’s Engelnest (with solidarity network Kopuntu) and at the Free University Berlin, and one on 25 October at London Hackney’s Arcola Theatre (with theatre production company Pan Productions). In between, I also recorded new episodes of the podcast series, Exiled Lives (available at all relevant platforms). My guests were Memet Ali Alabora, Mîrza Metîn and Kawa Nemir at Engelnest, and Barış Celiloğlu, Naz Yeni and Koray Can Yanaşır at the Arcola. What struck me was that they were all good storytellers in their own right; yet a characteristic of displacement born out of necessity is that the storytellers are not entirely in control of their own narratives. They become the story. I wish to address in this article a few of my insights.