DATE AND VENUE

03.06.2002
Haydarpaşa Train Station

İSTANBUL MUNICIPAL THEATRES TURKEY

• Written by: Nâzım Hikmet
• Directed by: Rutkay Aziz

“Human Landscapes” is an epic Nâzım Hikmet started to write in The Bursa Prison in 1941. The following is what the poet wrote in Moscow, November 1961, on this massive body of work: “In naming the History that I lived, my choice was “Human Landscapes”... In writing it, I embraced poetic license... The first volume starts on in spring 1941 at The Haydarpaşa Train Station of Istanbul. When I was released from the prison, I had 66 thousand complete lines. My thirsty embrace of freedom was soon to be followed, in a year, by the immediate need to leave my motherland. I could not take Human Landscapes with me for fear that it could be usurped in the case of being caught up... This may sound weird to you, but I truly had no chance to copy all of the 66 thousand lines... Soon after I arrived in Moscow, I was informed that they were gone, either lost to the Police, or burnt... All I have today is seventeen thousand lines.” Taking his work to its original setting, The Haydarpaşa Train Station, Rutkay Aziz dramatizes the first chapter of this epic: a tremendous human saga as well as a flamboyant history.