Leyla Nazli – juggling myth and reality

Riding high: Leyla Nazli. Photograph: Gretel Ensignia

Whilst many of us start the new year pledging to make wholesale changes to our lives, Leyla Nazli, playwright and executive producer of the Arcola in Dalston, must be hoping 2013 is a year of stability and consolidation for the theatre she founded with Mehmet Ergen in 2000.

A whirlwind two years saw the theatre move to a former paint factory on Ashwin Street before last summer undertaking major renovation work on the site.

Although cosmetically much has changed, the standard of work remains high. Nazli’s latest play, The Mare Rider, opens this month and features a turn by the Olivier Award-winning actor Kathryn Hunter.

“It’s about a woman called Selma who is in the maternity ward of Homerton hospital. Something goes wrong and she is visited by a mythical creature called Elka,” says Nazli.

Elka, the Mare Rider, is a subversive and vengeful baby-stealer, a timeless creature of who inhabits dreams and takes Selma on a fantastical journey – stealing wine, meeting seahorses and mermaids, and riding mares across meadows.

The character of Elka comes from Turkish myth. In the past in Turkey, the idea that Elka would steal a baby whilst the birth was taking place was so powerful that mothers-to-be were guarded for three days.

For Nazli, though, Elka is an ambivalent character: someone traditionally presented as a murderer and cheat, but at the same time a character who enjoys freedom in every sense of the word.

“To me Elka is a representation of early feminism,” says Nazli. “She represents freedom – to ride horses and get drunk, hunt and do all those things which thousands of years ago women were probably forbidden to do.

“In the play, Selma grew up with the idea that there’s this mythical character who steals babies and kills the mother. She’s then revisited by that character. Elka also represents Selma’s fears about life and her decision to have a baby in her 40s.”

Nazli reveals that she earmarked Kathryn Hunter for the role of Elka when she saw her perform in a production of Lorca’s play Yerma at the Arcola in 2006.

“She’s amazing. A very physical actor. I think her physicality is really going to add to the play,” Nazli enthuses. “In a way I conceived this idea of Elka for her – though it took me six years to write the play!”

The lengthy gestation is at least in part due to Nazli’s role in helping to run a theatre that, despite the poorly state of the arts in the UK, appears to be in good shape.

“We have plans to expand further,” Nazli says, “though not this year – that’s for our next five-year plan.”

For the rest of 2013, Nazli plans to focus her attention on facilitating the commissioning and production of new work from young writers, directors and theatre companies.

“We know that there is no money out there”, she admits, “so my main mission this year is to find sponsors or foundations that can help, because theatres like us have to do something so that new talent can develop.”

Mare Rider
22 January – 16 February 2013
Arcola Theatre
24 Ashwin Street
Hackney
E8 3DL