This Game Contains A High Dose Of Mobbing
Staff, starring Aslı Enver and Dolunay Soysert, continues to play sold out this season. The play, which is based on the dialogues between a human resources manager and an employee, shows the highest point that mobbing can reach, while benefiting from the blessings of black humor.
He says ‘Is there something you want to tell us’ in a very professional tone and repeats this at regular intervals. This question, which would sound like an ‘oasis in the desert’ if it were spoken by a sincere friend, annoys the addressee. Because it is not a friend asking the question, but a human resources manager who lives his professionalism as if it is something sacred. The addressee of the question, which is posed with a mixture of curiosity and intervention, is a white-collar worker who, like almost everyone else, does not like to be interfered with in his private life. The result of the frequent encounters of these two is ‘mobbing’, one of the new concepts brought to our language by the plaza life.
STAFF
which has been staged by Craft since last season , continues to sell out this year as well. Of course, the fact that the players are made up of popular names such as Aslı Enver and Dolunay Soysert has an impact on this interest, but the fact that the game captures a large audience, especially in big cities, is another factor that makes Staff attractive. Sometimes exaggerated sections in the text place the play somewhere between a ‘black comedy’ and a ‘realistic piece’. Because while watching the play, which is mostly based on making the audience laugh, there are moments when you put yourself in the shoes of the staff and feel the boredom inside.
Emma works in the sales department of a corporate company and her performance is not bad at all. However, in the capitalist system, the system does not find it sufficient for the employee to have a high performance for the moment. Yes it is good for now but who can guarantee for the future? What if Emma falls in love with someone in a way that disrupts her work, and this person she is in love with works in the same place, especially if this person has a child or something. Zinhar should take all precautions, the head of the snake should be crushed when it is small. Despite the frequent reminders of the contract and all those annoying warnings, the snake’s head cannot be crushed when it is small, but the pressure continues to increase and Emma’s life turns into a nightmare.
Aside from Aslı Enver, who successfully got her first theater experience, Dolunay Soysert, who plays the human resources manager, gives a performance called ‘getting giants on the stage’. He successfully copes with a difficult role, which is very frustrating and, again, due to professionalism, trying not to let it go. The ‘corporate smile’ that she does not miss because of she often prompts the audience to empathize with Emma.
Written by British writer Mark Bartlett, Staff was brought to the stage with Çağ Çalışkur’s director. It is understood that Çalışkur remained faithful to the text and distanced himself from the adaptation. This may actually have caused some of the dialogues to remain too ‘Western’ for the Turkish audience. At least for some. The decor design of Taciser Sevinç, on the other hand, reflected the atmosphere of the plaza quite successfully. The transparency and openness of the plaza environment, which launches revealing the private life of the employees as professionalism, is given well. The screens placed on both sides of the stage and focusing more on Emma’s facial expression also involve the audience in the activity of ‘watching the employees’ of the plazas.
The Staff is a successful and very up-to-date play, except that all the scenes focus on the meeting between the employee and the human resources manager and the fact that it always takes place in the same venue makes the audience a little bored.
