Nuran David Calis

How do we treat refugees directly in front of our door? Which reality do these people encounter in our country? People who left everything behind – family, job, home and all securities. When at the same time xenophobia and racism are spreading and the shelters for refugees are hopelessly understaffed and underfinanced. What do we tell the people who are not allowed to really arrive here, but also can’t go back?
For , Nuran David Calis has talked to refugees and social workers, but also supporters of Saargida, on behalf of the Saarländisches Staatstheater, and turned the many stories he heard during his research into a very political play.

“I keep standing exactly where I am, I belong neither in nor out, I belong to the threshold…”

Menem is a bouncer at Café Europa. His place is the in-between – both in front of the shop and in life. Menem is torn, divided between the different cultures he has been placed in. He uses a “Life off the RACK, a language off the RACK”, nothing is tailor-made for him. The door is his crutch: here, he is needed, here everyone knows who and what he is, he can hold onto them in his rootless existence – between inside and outside.
Natascha shakes his eternal mantra of “I belong exactly here”. Natascha, the famous actress, who just lost her grip, who is in the process of coming undone herself. Menem is supposed to be her shadow-like bodyguard, free in everything – he just has to be there. Her new bond, a root. Menem stays at the door.

The thought of his parents shakes his protective self-assurance. But the memory of his homeless family is also a confirmation for the in-between being the only right place for him. Yusuf and Maria, Menem’s dead parents, are facing the same conflict: they want the established, even if it’s strange; he wants to hike to the home of his ancestors to find a treasure and discover the secret of the well.
Eva could be a calm anchor for Menem. She would stay or go with him, no matter what. It would always be a home. He only has to decide.

After Dog Eat Dog and Dogland Café Europa is the third part of the home trilogy. Dense and impressive, Calis tells of people without an internal or external home and the search for it.

1794. The fifth year of the French Revolution. The discussion about its “correct” development has reached its peak. The band of the Dantonists, who demand moderation and pacification of the conflicts, stands against Robespierre and his allies, who insist on radical solutions with the aid of the guillotine. Dea is protesting in the streets and demanding justice and wealth.
Which path should the revolution take? How does one keep political power? Which ideology is most effective in pacifying the discontented masses?
Büchner advances to the key questions of political altercations in his clear-sighted drama. He examines the difficulties of political conduct, if its vision is keeping power. He describes the staging of political murders.

Nuran David Calis transfers these struggles into the modern setting of a fictional oval office, in which both parties defend their positions in claustrophobic isolation and try to enforce them. While a desperate struggle for space or victory takes place inside, the “mob”, the “people”, the “citoyens” are acting out outside and tip the scales. (Schauspiel Stuttgart)

The Dogan family of Turkish origin has just buried their family father. In the middle of the mourning bursts the news of the arson attack on a Turkish house in Mölln. Three people are burning to death, two of them are children. The year 1992 is cruel for minorities, Germany experiences the most massive racist riots since the end of World War II.
The loss of the father Murat Dogan, who belonged to the first generation of guest workers from Turkey, has deeply affected the family. Together, the three adult children and their mother try to cope with the grief. And the legacy. Because Murat left his family a logistics company worth millions. But the surviving relatives disagree on how the company can be continued. Against the background of the arson attack and numerous neo-Nazi marches, the question arises whether Germany is still safe. The questions of home, identity, family, togetherness and self-determination lead to strong disputes in which each family member must question his or her position and find an attitude, under the budding racism in their "foreign homeland".
Using documentary elements based around the tragic events of Mölln, Nuran David Calis describes the fearful ordeal of the fictitious entrepreneurial family Dogan.

9 June 2014 marked ten years since a nail bomb attached to a bike injured 22 people, some gravely, and destroyed multiple shops in the Keupstraße in Cologne. The targets of the cowardly attack were the people living in the street, which was mainly characterised by its Turkish residents, and with them the ideal of an open society. The attack was exposed in 2011 as being committed by the right-wing terror group National Socialist Underground (NSU), but for seven years previously the police and politicians had denied that there was a xenophobic background to the crime. Instead, the residents themselves became the focus of the investigations: the real victims of the attack became potential perpetrators.

Now, ten years after the attack, the NSU terror and its aftermath are examined by the court in Munich. Author, director and movie-maker Nuran David Calis spent a year meeting residents and shop owners in the Keupstraße in Cologne again and again, asking them how they experienced the attack and its aftermath. But he also asked for the stories of today’s Keupstraße and how life in this special street has changed over the years.
Like this, a depiction of the Keupstraße is developed from the viewpoint of the people who live there. And they tell the story themselves – residents and shop owners stand on stage together with the actors.
Performed in the theatre and on the Keupstraße itself, in the immediate vicinity of the Depot. (Announcement Schauspiel Köln)

Baumheide – a plattenbau settlement in the north-east of Bielefeld. The “Glass House” – the hippest club in town. Serkan and Tom – bouncers. Marco – their buddy. Viktor – the enemy. And because Serkan and Tom have power and Marco wants power and Viktor gives power the story ends tragically, not least because of the women. Marco has a thing with Ziska, Viktor’s girlfriend. Serkan falls for Lola, the actor and outsider. Lily wants Tom, who loves Serkan. And because Viktor doesn’t share Ziska and Marco is doing shady deals and Serkan wants to drop out and Tom buys a weapon, Lily runs after Ziska, Marco plays his friends off against Viktor, Lola waits for the bus, the fronts harden, Marco is being tortured, Serkan mediates, Tom is armed and Viktor’s gang is ready – they end up destroying each other. The destructive hatred, envy and jealousy rip through the youth, destroying the crumbs of happiness and the hope. The only thing left behind is Baumheide.
Dog Eat Dog is a mixture between Shakespeare and Pulp Fiction, poetry and slang, love and terror. It bursts forth, recounting the inevitable fate of its characters, with remarkable tenderness it lets them suffer, love and hope. A piece of theatre, that in its synergy with the underlying aggression of the rap and hip-hop lyrics creates a maelstrom nearly no one will be able to escape from.

I’m sorry mama
I never meant to hurt you
I never meant to make you cry
but tonight I’m cleaning out my closet. (Eminem)

Dog Eat Dog – ten years later no one is talking about an escape anymore. Au contraire, middle class is the name of the game, cosiness the battle cry of middle-class living. Only one moved away, but even he is driven back – to Baumheide. Memo, 30, wants to carve a tombstone for his deceased father, pay his last respects to him after seven years of flight. But everything has changed. His mother Lale now has Mike, Frank lays cork flooring, Alex dives into the sewers, Christin plays the Ukrainian prostitute.
Memo’s arrival disquiets the fussy uprightness of the settled ones, the returned chafes their nerves. Uncontrollable energies find their way. Memo, despite being passive, serves as a trigger for long-suppressed hopes and passions. The bourgeois is revealed as an empty façade with deceit, betrayal and murder lurking beneath. Memo is held responsible for the crash of life plans. Together with the dug-up skeleton of his father he buries Mike, Frank and his mother. It’s the day of reckoning.

Dogland, the second part of the home trilogy, recounts the moment when what is established must be questioned and life’s lies must be revealed. What is left when we have to face our doubts? Like in Dog Eat Dog, Nuran Calis creates a heavily close intensity in the connection with music, a fascination with dread, whose roots are in this play founded in everyday life.

The number of refugees has risen significantly, as reported by the UN Refugee Agency at the end of 2021: 84 million people worldwide are fleeing violence, war and the consequences of climate change. People who are forced to leave their homes often do so involuntarily. They are driven out by banishment, expatriation or political persecution in their own countries. However, Europe's external borders on land and at sea are strictly guarded. Human rights violations in the name of border security and illegal pushbacks are commonplace. Once people have made it into exile, they often work to change the political situation in their home country and thus create a basis for their return. In light of Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine and the refugee movements of recent years, EXIL uses artistic means to shed light on the current living conditions of refugees. (Announcement Schauspiel Köln)

Over roughly two years the balance of the world has been redefined, beginning with the Arab countries. Nearly everywhere it’s the young people whose protests achieve change. In the West, the discontent of the young generation is breaking ground as well, whether the lootings of the London riots or the big demonstrations in Madrid, New York and other cities. But what do those who are young in Germany know about the protests in the world? Together with author and director Nuran David Calis, nine acting students from Bochum have contacted people of the same age all over the world and are now telling stories of life and awakening in Tunisia, Spain, Iran, America, Libya, England, Russia and the Gaza Strip – about hope and the drama of their generation.

At the theatre meet-up of German language acting schools, which took place from 23 to 29 June 2013 at the Berlin University of the Arts, Children of the Revolution won the Friedl Wald foundation prize of €10,000 – the top prize of the meet-up.
(Announcement Schauspielhaus Bochum)

The play tells the story of Ismet and Ayse and the radicalisation of their son Hakan. In doing so, it spans the time from the political and social circumstances in Turkey – starting in the sixties through to September 1980, shortly before the military coup in Turkey – to contemporary Germany.
Ismet and Ayse grow up in Turkey, fall in love and plan for a shared life in times of awakening and turmoil. Ismet is politically active, he can write well and has a small typewriter, which is why he offers his services to those who can’t read or write on the Taksim square in Istanbul. For a short while, freedom seems within their reach, but then there is gunfire, the dreams of a free life are brutally destroyed. Ayse is pregnant, she and Ismet are in danger. So they leave Turkey, move to distant Germany to offer their son a safe future.

Thirty years later Hakan is grown up. He is increasingly secretive, withdraws into his room, turns to religion and grows apart from his parents who have to watch their past catch up to them in their own four walls.

In Kuffar. Die Gottesleugner, Nuran Calis examines the difficult question of making the right decisions in life with a stirring mixture of poetry, brutality and comedy. And he poses the question: when does a right decision threaten to lead down a completely wrong path?

Youth- from sidewalk to skyline- Peer- without detours-
away from here fast and never back- Peer
will not exist much longer either- if he stays here-
you won’t end up like daddy- in this shithole
-this place- which doesn’t love you- which bleeds you out
-without giving you anything- from now on I’ll let a beat run-
hard and thundering- boom boom boom boom- it spurs me on
-it drives me to the front- I want to make my way

Growing up- stop- Peer- where are your
manners- my daddy took them to the grave
-hihi- you know me- and you know I’m
legend- but you’re all fakers- I’m your
sun- my charm attracts you- come
closer and you’ll burn- the judgement of the people
will be my demise- out and fin- I’m flowing
like the wind- I let it out like a Pitbull-
you won’t survive the heat of life- look- I
hurt myself lifting my life- after this part
I will throw up

Old age- what I did wasn’t right- everything
I said
isn’t worth much more than dirt- I don’t know
who I am- come on Peer decide (!)-
now (!)- I don’t know- I don’t have an identity-
which holds my skin around me- I have created nothing
of lasting value…- it is time for me to go
and don’t turn
around anymore- I’m my own friend- who dreams
of himself- and only for himself- of better
days

Notes about Henrik Ibsen’s protagonist by Nuran David Calis

2022 marked thirty years since the arson attack on the Arslan family home in Mölln. The right-wing extremists killed three people: grandmother Bahide Arslan, her ten-year-old granddaughter Yeliz Arslan, and fourteen-year-old cousin Ayse Yilmaz, who was visiting from Turkey. In the early 1990s - at a time when immigrants were still called "guest workers" and "asylum seekers" - the attack in Mölln was not an isolated incident. Right-wing extremists raged publicly and with onlookers cheering them on; in Hoyerswerda, Rostock or Solingen. The documentary piece MÖLLN 92/22 is dedicated to the history of the Arslan and Yilmaz families through conversations and interviews. The long-gone Federal Repulbic of (West) Germany is told from the perspective of the immigrants and those affected by racism. A perspective that has so far hardly been included in German active historiography. The production MÖLLN 92/22 opens the space for this discursive discussion with artistic means. A line is drawn between then and now, within which it becomes clear that right-wing radical structures and racism are still lethal. (Announcement of the Schauspiel Köln)

We live almost 1000 years after the time in which Lessing set Nathan the Wise, and conflicts between Christians, Jews and Muslims continue.
Berlin. This is where Nathan Grossman, a lawyer and head of the Jewish community, lives with his stepsister Daja and his adopted daughter Recha. One night, they are attacked: a group of young men gain access to Nathan's apartment, write anti-Semitic slogans in Arabic script on the wall and start a fire.
The police assume Sunni perpetrators, and a suspected mastermind is also quickly found: the entrepreneur Salatin Denktas. Daja doubts the theory, as she is sure that the men did not speak Arabic. Besides, Salatin has a long friendship with Nathan and is planning a big real estate deal with him. Why would Salatin jeopardize all that? Jonas, a police officer with the Federal Criminal Police Office, is also asking himself this question as he investigates the background to the attack, assisted by Recha, who works as a journalist. Who is Aris, who needs new passports for himself and his family, working for? And what role does the State Security actually play? The deeper Jonas delves into the investigation, the more personally entangled he becomes - because suddenly his own past catches up with him.

While news of competing refugee flows from Ukraine and the Middle East run across the live tickers and suspicions run in all directions, a young Aramaic girl with green eyes sells pearl necklaces by the side of the road, unnoticed. Her long flight from Syria ends here - and here she has a final destination.

In his fast-paced and very contemporary rewriting of Lessing's dramatic poem, Nuran David Calis raises awareness of racism in the current refugee movement from Ukraine and the Middle East. In the microcosm of the characters, it is painfully brought home how complex the ongoing conflict between the three world religions is.

Eva, daughter from a good family, meets Grönsbeck, the bouncer of the club, and falls for him. But there is also Magista, a business partner of her father, whom she also likes. Eva knows how much her father Humbrecht would like this match, and she also suspects why. After the early death of his wife, Humbrecht doesn’t want to also lose his daughter, lose her to another life. For him, Magista would be the guarantee of things staying exactly as they are. But Eva gets pregnant by Grönsbeck, and Grönsbeck declares he wants to be a father to the unborn child. But he vanishes to the South to earn money. Eva will wait. Tell the truth to her father and a friend. And, despite that, fall apart in the end. Powerfully overwhelming and with language that precisely differentiates social differences, Heinrich Leopold Wagner tells the story of a love which fails because of class differences and different values in his domestic tragedy The Child Murderer, written in 1776.
Director and author Nuran David Calis has re-written Wagner’s Sturm und Drang drama and brought it into the urbanised present.
(Deutsches Theater Berlin)

“A group of political activists. They want to do something. Light a beacon, redirect the course of events, change the world. They meet up for a weekend to prepare a campaign. With them is Horst, under a false name, a boy from the fringes of society, who has very different interests. But something gets in the way. Desire, jealousy, resignation and pain. If one could only do something”

Schwarz is the first part of the schwarzrotgoldtrilogie and was written as part of the “Dramatikerstipendium des Kulturkreises der deutschen Wirtschaft 2005”, a playwright-scholarship of the cultural circle of German business, in cooperation with the Thalia Theater Hamburg.

**Play in preparation**

Germany in the 50s: the economy is booming, there is nearly full employment. To further accelerate the boom, the government concludes the so-called headhunting agreement for foreign workers, with countries that include Italy and Turkey. The still-young West Germany experiences a second Zero Hour; what follows is an era of immigration, which will deeply change the composition of society. Author and director Nuran David Calis has conducted a search for traces of this era in Cologne and the Ruhr Valley and condensed his impressions from meeting the former guest workers and their descendants into a play about three generations.
Silvio and Toni leave Naples in 1955 to work and earn money in Germany. Silvio goes to the mine in Essen and Toni to the foundry in Cologne. They don’t want to stay for long and they want to go back to Italy, to their girlfriends, every fortnight... In 1969, Ayse says goodbye to her great love Hassan on a hill near Istanbul, for she and her mother will follow her father to Germany. Ayse dreams about owning her own jewellery shop and being able to get Hassan to join her later. They will only meet again thirty years later on the hill. Both are over forty and have families… Essen Katernberg – today. Karim has grown up in Germany. He has studied law, but can’t find a job – who wants an Iranian to represent them in court? Karim is longing for a new beginning in Hamadan, the home of his family, where he has never been before… (Announcement Schauspiel Köln)

Somewhere there’s the Chioggia, a run-down restaurant. Its good days are long past, no matter how much the families Toni and Pari work. Nothing is going to change about it. Especially because all of them are constantly fighting. The men and women, the old and the young, even the lovers and engaged couples. Because Titta Nane and Lucietta could be happy. But Lucietta wants to leave as soon as they are married. And Titta Nane wants to take over the business and stay. That can only lead to fighting. And envy. And desires. And intrigues. And misunderstandings. And tears. And everyone participates. For that’s what they are good at. They have always been and they will always be.
When finally everything could end well, Lucietta suddenly wants to stay and Titta Nane wants to leave. And everything starts all over again…

Nuran Calis has written a fast-paced, contemporary commedia dell’arte. Loosely guided by the scenes and characters of the original, with the Chioggia he has written a metaphor about securities breaking away.
His characters are constantly searching for ways to stop the decay. The solution seems simple: stronger together. But for the Chioggias this is one of the most difficult requirements. Why not leave and find happiness somewhere else? Why fight together for an uncertain future? What for? No one knows the answers. But maybe they suspect something, sense something, maybe they can already smell it – the Arab Spring!