Mesut Arslan

Mesut Arslan's roots are wide-reaching: Macedonia, Kosovo, Turkey, Belgium, Flanders, … This is probably instrumental in the personal way he reconstructs texts, scenes, authors and images. He creates his own style, which evolves to a visual language that experimentally incorporates language.

In Turkey Mesut acted in performances of the city theatre of Izmir and in theatre group Yenis Asir, where he was also assistant director. At twenty years old, he boarded a plane to Belgium on his own, where he became active in the theatre world after a few years and started his own company. With Anatolia Theatre Group (ATG) he mainly scored successes in the Turkish community. Later he created Platform 0090, a workshop and base for the research, creation and presentation of multidisciplinary arts with references to the Mid-West. He also acts as its artistic director. In 2006 he curated the Theaterfestival for Belgium and the Netherlands.

In 2005 he rechristens ATG to theatre company OnderHetVel, with himself as the director, Eric Raeves as choreographer and visual artist Mereyem Bayram as scenographer. Together they seek out artistic experiments and challenging confrontations in the workplace. This engenders a complexly layered diversity, both in terms of cultural background and artistic disciplines, as exemplified by performances like Kamer en de Man and Hebben/Zijn. In Plot, OnderHetVel investigates what the basis of theatre is and should be.

The list of Mesut Arslan’s achievements is long: in 2010 he collaborated with Guy Cassiers of Toneelhuis; in 2011 he directed Ve Veya Ya Da (Either/Or) in former homeland Turkey. In 2012 and 2013 he took Kamer en de Man to Istanbul, Brussels and London. During season 2013-14 he directed Harold Pinter’s Betrayal as well as Verborgen Gezicht, a gem by Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk.

Mesut Arslan has been part of the open ensemble of KVS since 2017 and is a trusted director for our house. His first project for us, Nachtelijk Symposium, is a worthy debut. Together with Michael De Cock he is also involved in the creation of Kamyon.

This autumn, Mesut Arslan takes on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf: one of the greatest theatre classics of the past century. In true ‘Arslan-style’, he fits the piece in an exceptional scenography and makes remarkable choices.

http://mesutarslan.be

PHOTOS (high-res)   
(high-res images which you can use free of charge with attribution)

Performances by and with Mesut Arslan