VIŞNE BAHÇESI (The Cherry Orchard) by Anton Chekhov

New Adaptation by Courtney Nelson, Elizabeth Stern, Jonathan Solari
Director: Jonathan Solari
Translated by Yaprak Ünver
Dramaturg: Gwendolyn Collaço
Cast: Ahmet Öztürk, Yaprak Ünver, Almira Ince, Özgecan Ayhan, Ferit Çelik, Canberk Doğalı
Design Team: Courtney Nelson

---

In May 2013, protests broke out in Turkey over plans by the government to replace Istanbul’s Gezi Park with a new shopping mall and apartments. In July 2013, elsewhere in the city, the government began bulldozing the Yedikule gardens that line the fifth-century Byzantine walls of old Constantinople. In the eyes of the protestors, the government's plans put development at odds with historical memory, sustainable living, and preservation.

Immediately following the first round of voting in Turkey’s 2014 presidential election, New Brooklyn Theatre, in association with Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, staged a site-specific production of a new adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard in Turkish in Istanbul. The Cherry Orchard shows the decline of one class, the rise of another, and how an ancestral estate changes hands at a historical turning point: an apt choice for the Yedikule gardens as they face new questions of development and community impact.