Beren Tuna and Hannah Nagel
Foto: Tanja Dorendorf T+T Fotografie
Beren Tuna (*1980, raised in Turkey and Germany) completed her acting training in 2006 at the HMT (now ZHdK). Since then, she has worked as a freelance artist. As an actress, she has performed at venues including the Staatstheater Braunschweig, Theater Basel, Neuköllner Oper Berlin, Konzert Theater Bern, and Bühne Aarau. In 2016, Beren Tuna won the Swiss Film Award for Best Actress for her role in the feature film Köpek (directed by Esen Işık). She is currently performing in the production Stilles Geld by the group radikal plüsch at Theater Winkelwiese. Since 2018, Beren Tuna has been regularly creating her own theater productions, in which she directs and/or performs on stage. For her own projects, she has collaborated with Gessnerallee, Fabriktheater, Theater Chur, Schlachthaus Theater, and sogar theater. Beren Tuna is interested in taking on roles in conceptualization, leadership, and/or acting, depending on the context of the work. She continuously navigates this intersection, exploring the interplay of these different positions and collective work processes. Key thematic pillars in her work include storytelling from a female* perspective and examining how, in a post-migrant society, alternative narratives can challenge the perception of "the Other." Beren Tuna is a co-founder and board member of the FemaleAct association, where she advocates for equality and diversity in film and theater. In this context, she is connected with various activist initiatives in Switzerland that work in their own ways toward a more inclusive and sustainable theater practice without discrimination.
Foto: Laila Bosco
Hannah Nagel (*1996, she/her), born near Cologne, studied Theatre Studies, Art History, and Psychology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Università degli Studi di Padova. She worked as an assistant at various city theaters, most recently at Luzerner Theater. There, she presented her first independent productions, including the classroom play Die Eisbärin by Eva Rottmann, Bilder deiner grossen Liebe by Wolfgang Herrndorf, and the stage adaptation of Nele Pollatschek's novel Kleine Probleme. With her performance POPSTAR PAPA, she won the Tankstelle Bühne award. Hannah is particularly interested in themes, texts, and characters by and about FLINTA (women, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans, and agender) individuals of all ages. She focuses on reimagining familiar narratives and enjoys exploring the political dimensions of classical stories, creating visibility for marginalized experiences, and negotiating the complexity of human existence.
Project
In Switzerland, LGBTQIA+ people make up 13% of the total population (Ipsos Global Report LGBTQAI+ 2024). Young people, in particular, are more informed and sensitised today than they were just a few years ago. In the last Zurich youth survey, 26% of females* and 9% of males* in ninth grade identified as not or not exclusively heterosexual (Christina Caprez, Queer Kids, 2024). At the same time, however, the political climate is becoming harsher, and not just in Europe. Homophobia and transphobia are being fuelled by conservative and right-wing parties all over the world, sometimes violently. Hard-won rights for equality and the protection of LGBTQIA+ people are being reversed. These are uncertain times for us queer people!
If we want to use theatre as the political, community-building medium that it can be, we need plays and productions that make queer realities of life visible, invite people to identify with them and create moments of solidarity. I want to discover, write, rework and produce this material for the theatre.
That’s why, as part of the DoubleTheatre mentoring programme, I’m going to look for queer literature for the stage with Beren Tuna. Together, we search, write and invent stories, associative streams, scenic moments.
Which stories strengthen our community? Where do differentiated representations of queer perspectives occur? What language do we use? In search of all this, we stumble through jucy novels, tender conversations, literary experiments and our own vulnerability.