Tuba Unsal

Ayşe Kulin, for example, is a woman who has both great elegance and a great career. Frida Kahlo is a painter who has gone through life with love and pain and has reflected all her pain in her art. Sabiha Gokcen is another woman I am inspired by.

No one who knows me personally has had a biased conclusion about what I do. I do not care about the opinions of those who do not know me personally. I think the last time I had to express myself was about why I put so much effort and money into the theater. My life is not a life that people who do not live passionately can understand.

I pray. When I was little, I was part of a very religious family, my grandmother was a conservative Muslim. I prayed as I named my daughter after her that she would be as merciful as my grandmother. Thanks to her, I learned to pray, read prayers, and worship. However, with the taboos of religion in modern society and the pressure in the society, I suddenly found myself meditating, listening to Sanskrit mantras in a language I did not understand. Then I discovered that there was actually such a thing as ‘collective prayer’. I saw the miracles of the vibration of prayer that everyone in this land shared. Now I am starting to pray again. I also started the morning prayer. Prostration has a tremendously positive effect on the pituitary gland together with blood flow. The balasana pose and prostration in yoga have the same effect. The word for both of them (prostration and balasana) is “to submit, to surrender.” Although I cannot enter into a holistic life change to fulfill religious obligations, I am free to choose what is good for me. I used to hesitate to say that I prayed because religion is perceived as a great taboo and unmodernizable in our society. You are immediately criticized for the rest of your life. The one who prays has to cover her head and the one who prays cannot be in a drinking environment. These are sharp taboos. The essence of the matter is that I strengthen my spirituality to cope with life.

I read something recently. Women used plastic surgery very frequently after the 2000s. If the main goal is to look young, the human subconscious feels that they are old when they see a woman with plastic surgery, botox, and filling. We live in a world where everyone looks like the same. I certainly do not find that aesthetic. Spiritual transformation feels better than physical change to feel good about myself.

I am working on doing theater in Paris and Berlin. I am going to go to Puglia, Italy for ‘The Dead as told by Ants’ theatre play written by Golden Globe-winning screenwriter Heidrun Schleef. I think there are no limits to creativity.