Currently showing as part of the Footprints Festival at Jermyn Street Theatre, The EU Killed My Dad by Aaron Kilercioglu features British spies, Turkish soldiers, and London’s kebab shops.
This prize-winning play is “an inventive, fast-paced exploration of identity, belonging, and history spanning five decades” as a family reunion becomes an “exhilarating whodunnit investigation”.
Where: Jermyn Street Theatre
When: to 6 Feb
Ticket link,: https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/the-e-u-killed-my-dad/
Aaron tells us more about the play below.
Your play won the Woven Voices Prize in 2023 – many congratulations! What inspired you to write The EU Killed My Dad?
Thank you! I initially wrote the play trying to make sense of a series of major political events in Turkey, including the 2016 coup and its aftermath.
It ended up turning into a playful and personal story about trying to find your place in the world – wrapped up in a murder mystery.Â
What’s the best thing about being part of Jermyn Street Theatre’s Footprints Festival?
The community – being amongst other artists make me feel less alone. It’s really nerve-wrecking putting on something so personal. Having a group of supportive peers is really reassuring.Â
There’s a lot going on in the world at the moment around identity and belonging. It seems the perfect time to bring plays like yours to the surface. How important is drama in the current political climate?
Theatres have always been places where we go to meet ideas, to learn something new: about ourselves, our world, or people deeply different from us.
The world feels increasingly divided among lines of ideology and identity, lines that are rarely crossed, rarely communicated across.
We live in tumultuous times. Drama has the ability to cultivate and rehearse the emotions we will need to move forward.
Theatre can directly confront us with the stories we choose to ignore, or those we think we understand already. It can expand our imaginations.
Most importantly, it can expand our empathy. It confronts us with the aching humanity of others. The desire for drama is clear – the question is whether we can heed that call.Â
How important has MENA Arts UK been to you in recent years?
MENA Arts was so important to me when I first started trying to build a career in theatre.
It is a directory to find collaborators interested in the ideas and worlds I care about. But more than that, it is a place that makes artists feel valued and that the stories they want to tell are important.Â
Do you sense a change in the way creatives present and develop their work since lockdown?
I think above all else the pandemic has changed how we communicate.
Literally, in the sense that half my week is spent on Zoom, sometimes collaborating for months without ever meeting the team face-to-face.
But also in the sense that we have had to think more critically about our processes, how we want to exist in space with collaborators and audiences.
While there’s still lots to be done, I think that change is going in a positive direction, one that encourages experimentation with new forms of leadership & hierarchy, prioritises equity, and challenges the exclusionary behaviours that had been normalised in the past.
Image credit: Jack Sain