Continuing with my [Laura-Elizabeth Rice, director for “The War in Heaven”] interviews with our creative team, I chatted with our assistant director Irem Saticioglu, about her journey into theatre and directing. People seem to come to directing from such different places- we all get here via a journey, and though both Irem and I were born outside of Britain, we both seem to have found that the personal journey has been more convoluted than the geographic one. Enjoy learning a bit about her route from puppet-phobic child to Assistant Director for a puppet-filled Mystery Play! [Note: this interview has been edited for brevity.] 

How did you get started in theatre?

I started doing student theatre in Glasgow, when I was studying at University of Glasgow. Then I had the opportunity to direct a small play; that’s what got me into directing. I had a lot of fun and I wanted to do that for the rest of my life. Then I finished uni and decided to do my master’s on theatre. My education wasn’t on theatre, [my degree] was zoology, so there was a big switch from biology science, STEM subjects to theatre. I did my theatre-making MA at University of York; during it and after graduation I’ve been doing theatre in York. This is my first time doing mystery plays, but I’m really enjoying it so far. 

What got you interested in the Mystery Plays?

I wanted to do mystery plays since I learned [that they] exist. It was during my MA because I wasn’t aware of anything like this in Glasgow, but since I learned about it I wanted to become part of it. I didn’t know if I could be a part of a directing team, I was thinking I would volunteer or do something [else] in it because it’s a big lovely festival and then I realized that maybe a [version of] directing is possible. I know a couple of the groups in it as well, and I know how they were passionate about it. And specifically with The War in Heaven, I think it’s the badass play of the entire group. I’m really interested in the idea of discovering Lucifer, by himself as a character, and Lucifer’s relationship with God and how that ends, how it doesn’t go well and an angel turning into a fallen angel and that being why the universe is created is a very interesting story to me. That’s why this one caught my eye.

Why did you get interested in directing specifically?

There was a student theatre society that I was already a part of, but I was doing stage management and helping with props, not getting too involved with the stories or the creative progress, and in one of the small festivals that we had, I tried to actually enter with my writing but I didn’t get picked and then a friend said,  “would you like to direct one of them, though, because we’re still allowing directors to say, oh yeah, I’m interested in that play,” and then I used it as [a springboard]. ‘If I can’t write I’m gonna direct’, was kind of my motto. I decided directing is better for me than writing. I can’t remember what happened in that process that took me from writing only, to [thinking] I should maybe direct, but I think it was the  making of something as a group that really got me, because [although] writing can be a group thing as well, most of the time you write something, give it to a group of people and then they perform it. Finding the best way of performing something is actually, for me, a more thought-provoking process than just sitting and writing something. So [the fact] that it’s collaborative is what got me, and the creative process is digging into something that’s already written, rather than creating something from zero to 100. Digging deeper into something is like solving a mystery: you need to solve that to get [somewhere]. What I mean is, I thought it was really fun but I didn’t know it was a feeling like that before I tried it.

What’s your first memory of theatre?

This is really funny because we have puppets [in our show]. My earliest memory is actually me being very afraid of puppets in a puppet theatre. I think I was five or four. It was one of those puppets with wooden arms and legs and I remember this puppeteer bringing the puppet to my lap- I started screaming. But [my first] positive memory of [theatre] was when I was like 13. We went to see a show in Istanbul. IIt was [a one-man production of] Diary of a Madman, from Gogol, Nikolai Gogol, a Russian dude. That play really got me. I just couldn’t believe something like that was possible and I remember at the end of it I was actually crying silently, I was staring at something and I was just crying, I wasn’t even aware that I was crying and then I went, “oh, I want to do this!” There was something that got me and I knew I didn’t want to do acting so it was more about, I want to be involved in this, I want to do something that has to do with this. 

You grew up in Turkey- we have a very international group, really! How does theatre differ from Turkey and the UK?

I don’t know a lot in terms of doing it. I can comment on it as as an audience member, because I’ve been an audience member for both Turkish and English theatre. I think the culture of going to the theatre is different: in the UK it’s a bit more- I can’t believe I’m saying this- it’s a bit more accessible, really. We always talk about how inaccessible arts are in the UK and how it’s getting harder; it’s the truth, it’s getting really hard [to afford to go to performances], but I think it’s even harder to do it [in Turkey]. It’s the class divide. You really don’t [go to the theatre] in Turkey if you are not that lucky in terms of financial situations. In the UK, you can actually be in the middle of a street and, “Oh yeah, they’re doing a play there, let’s go see that!”, like we’re doing now. You know, in the UK, there are opportunities like that. I think it’s less like that in Turkey. I think it’s a bit more focused on, “we need to make more money from this”. Even a very small, independent theatre company, they’re more focused on the money than the art. I don’t want to really say it’s always like that, but I think it’s a bit more accessible here with opportunities to be involved. We don’t have a lot of community theatre going on in Turkey.

Also when I’m in Turkey and I talk about doing theatre in the UK [the people I’m talking to] always go into Shakespeare, “oh my god how many Shakespeare shows have you done?” and I’m like, maybe one? I’ve done The Tempest and I was a stage manager. Meanwhile, we do new writing [more in the UK]. I’ve done so much new writing in the past couple of years. This- the mystery plays and the one I did before these [the Nativity with York Supporters Trust] are the [historical] texts that I’ve done, but the rest have been new writing, and I think it’s really nice in the UK that you get a lot of [that]. In Turkey you get translations of popular, classical plays, like you get Russian literature, Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, some American classics; you get classic or well-known writing more than you get new writing. I know a lot of Turkish theatre makers, both professional and non-professional, who have moved into UK so that they are a bit more active in theatre because it gets really stagnant in Turkey. [They think], nothing new is happening, where do we go, what do we do now? They usually either create their own independent theatres so that they have artistic control and they get to pick what they’re doing and they’re not just doing whatever the big theatre people say, or they just go somewhere [else].

What’s your favourite show that you’ve worked on?

I think it was the first thing I did as a student. To this day, I think it’s the best thing I’ve done. We did a show called Eve Strong, an Adam-and-Eve and even a Harry Potter-esque play, about a girl called Eve- it was actually “Adam Strong” when we first started doing it, but we couldn’t cast any boys. [It had all] the tropes: the chosen one trope, and the wise elder trope, the villain, the romantic interest, and the parent of the hero telling them, “You have a purpose in life,” and guiding them through. We had all of those people in it and I had so much fun breaking down every single character, because they’re very classical characters, but you never really think about them, you just take them for granted. Like Harry Potter- we all know him but do we? I just loved that production. I loved working with it. It was the first time that I’d done any directing at all. We had a really nice group of people , everyone was so naturally funny and it just worked out. It is what got me into theatre and I still think it was the best thing I’ve done. My aim is do something better than that. My best memory is the first- everything was perfect in my first [show]. I feel like I need to up that at some point, I need to redo that or even do something better than that.

That one show, where everything’s perfect, you don’t get that very often.

Maybe this show will be the best one! I’m going to hope.

What’s your favourite part of directing?

I think it’s watching people. When the cast gets together for the first time and the second time and seeing the difference, becoming unified, they’re becoming one and they’re understanding, “we have a mission and it’s a nice mission, we chose this”. Having one goal, all together, turning into that harmonized mix of different characters, different people but still having one single goal and wanting it to be good. And discovering their personalities and what they do in real life. I really enjoy seeing that because, especially community theatre, it’s bringing people together. I love seeing that. They get more comfortable with each other, they become friends and as a director you’re the person who sees the entire process happening. Sometimes it doesn’t happen, sometimes people get together and they’re more, “okay we’re professionals, we’re just gonna do this”, so they don’t get to be friends, but when it does happen I really enjoy that. 

What do you find to be the most challenging part of directing?

There’s a point zero, where you start for the first time, and there’s point ten, which is your goal- between zero and ten for me it is hard to navigate myself and not get lost in the tiny details. I have a general idea of what should happen and then perfecting it, so not getting caught with small details at the beginning is what I struggle with, so in the point one to point ten, before five is where I struggle, because it kind of happens by itself after that point- people know what to do. You have a basic blocking, you go into polishing and do costumes and puppets and the other things come in and it kind of happens by itself, because if you have a good group of people who know what they’re doing and you know what they should do when, it just comes together naturally. But before that point, where you’re not sure that it’s going to [seem like] random things, that’s gonna look all scattered, that’s what I struggle with. Not getting caught up with the smallest details, and not letting myself be upset about these small things as well. Sometimes I don’t know if [everything] is working out, and it gets to that point where you see, okay it’s actually happening. I’ve had it many times and I know this time it’s gonna happen again, but I need to know that it’s fine… It feels like it a director’s [form of] imposter syndrome. “Oh, can I do this? Am I doing this correctly? Is this gonna figure itself out? Or should I do more of this?” You’re literally not sleeping at all, but you’re [wondering], should I do more? The answer is no. You’re doing fine. But yeah, it’s the imposter syndrome. And every show is a new show, so each show will have a thing of its own as a problem, and just accepting that is helpful.