Kilam as theatre music in Kurdish theatre in Turkey

This chapter focuses on the use of "kilams" in Kurdish theatre as theatre music. Kilams are the narratives, expressions, and structures of dengbêjî's, which are traditional one-person oral performances of the Kurds. çelik will look at the dramaturgical contributions of the kilams used in the plays she has selected. She will combine methods of performance analysis with the evaluation of play texts, play recordings, field diary entries and notes, as well as (non-standardised) interviews. In this way, the author aims to understand the concept of "theatre music" via an ethnodramaturgical performance analysis. The concept of ethnodramaturgy refers to the analysis of the political/artistic/anthropological identity that people/society creates via performing arts. The main goal of the proposed notion of ethnodramaturgy is to make the theatre of "the other" visible and analyse the ethnocentric monocultural structure in the field of theatre by deconstructing it. Here, the focus will be on Kurdish theatre and dengbêjî. For this purpose, three Kurdish plays in which kilams were used as theatre music will be discussed and their respective functions on stage analysed.