The Play

The documentary was filmed in a village in Mersin. The village is Arslanköy. It lies up in the mountains. Nine women there come together. All nine are from the village. Their days are taken up with work. They work in the fields and on building sites. The work does not end when they get home. One day they make a decision. They are going to write a play. They will perform it themselves. The subject is their own lives, and the head of the village school helps them, so they use the school as their rehearsal room. As they tell their stories they face their own realities, and something new grows between them. After the play is staged each of them has changed in some way. Pelin Esmer made the seventy minute documentary, a Turkish production finished in 2005.