DATE AND VENUE

03, 04.06.1998, 20.30, Muhsin Ertuğrul Stage

ISTANBUL MUNİCİPAL THEATRES

• Written by: Bertolt Brecht
• Directed by: Yücel Erten

The play starts with the argument beetween two kolkhoz villages over a fertile piece of land. The new land owners have cultivated the land and have no intentions of giving it up. Who owns the land? Those who have worked hard to cultivate it or the original owners? The peasents hosting the argument perform a play based on an old Chinese story for their guests. In the play a governor is killed during a rebellion and his wifeleaves her child to die in a fire, while she picks up her belongings before she flees the town. The maid rescues the child from the fire, assumes responsability for the child at the cost of herown safety, weel-being and love. When things calm down after the war, the governor’s wife comes back asking for the child. A court case is opened to resolve the custody of the child.The court judge, who has been selected by the commanders during the turmoil, is easily bribed and interested more in his own advantages than in justice. However, he does give a fair verdict at the end of the trial and this also becomes the end of the argument over the land. The child belongs to the person who has cared for and raised him, while the land belongs to those who have cultivated it.