From the moment we decided that our team’s second research trip was to Istanbul, I began imagining an itinerary, feeling equal parts excitement and panic. First challenge: deciding on the geography that best demonstrates the relationship between theatre and gentrification in contemporary Istanbul. Second challenge: translating this into a three-day itinerary. It quickly turned out that Istanbul’s theatre and gentrification geography spans the city’s European and Asian sides, as well as the peninsula of historic Constantinople. We would have to walk up and down the old city’s cobble-stoned hills, and squeeze our way through streets packed with early spring tourists. Final challenge: we would have to actually get ourselves from one destination to another in this city of approximately twenty million! To do this, we would take ferries, trams, metros, and buses – all part of a dense network of public transportation that keeps Istanbulites on the move even as it creaks under the pressures of rush hour. In retrospect, these challenges were the point of our trip - to navigate Istanbul while trying to reach theaters both large and small, and to immerse ourselves in the kinds of mobility (fragmented and frequently unequal) experienced by urban residents.

Those familiar with Istanbul’s theatre and performance scene will not be surprised that our home base was in Beyoğlu, historic Pera. There, we walked up and down the storied Istiklal Avenue, stopping to observe the district’s cultural offerings. We took note of the new cultural spaces restored and subsidized by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, like Casa Botter, new commercial enterprises built on the ruins of former cinemas and theaters, like the Grand Pera Mall and the Sofitel Hotel, and ended our trek at the reconstructed Atatürk Cultural Center, whose glitzy façade bore little sign of the raucous banners that hung there during the Gezi Park protests of 2013.

On our second day, we took the ferry from Karaköy to Kadıköy, on the city’s Asian shores, to visit the many new theaters that have recently made Kadıköy into what artists call the new Beyoğlu. We examined the line-up at the Nazım Hikmet Kültür Merkezi, listened to the State Opera rehearsing at the Süreyya Operası, and toured through Kadıköy BOA Sahnesi, Moda Sahnesi and Baba Sahnesi, frequently descending into nondescript basements, only to find gleaming, flexible black-box theaters. Mid-day, we took a ferry from Kadıköy to Eyüp, where we visited Artİstanbul Feshane, yet another of the free cultural spaces that have mushroomed under the umbrella of IBBMiras, the current municipality’s Directorate of Cultural Heritage Preservation. From there, we took the tram to Balat, whose narrow streets are an unusual setting for thinking about performance. Yet it is here that theatre artists have been using spaces like the Pops Balat café, the disused and ruined Yuvakimyon High School for Greek Girls, and the recently founded Monologlar Müzesi. At first glance, these experiments appear to resonate with the classic “stages” of gentrification-via-culture. A closer look reveals a more complicated story. We ended our day with a performance of Balat Monologlar Müzesi: Duothat squeezed us into the tiny rooms and hallways of a three-story historic Balat row house.

On our third day, we were back in Beyoğlu, this time combing through İstiklal’s side streets, Tophane and Galata. We visited Sahne Gri, Kumbaracı50, Bereze Gösteri Evi, Çıplak Ayaklar Kumpanyası, BiSahne, and the former site of GalataPerform on Büyük Hendek Caddesi. This was an eerie experience, as GalataPerform’s Artistic Director, Yeşim Özsoy, had told us about how the abandoned street looked when she founded her theater there in 2003. During the two decades that followed, small businesses and local crafts stores transformed into cafés, with a Portuguese pastry shop landing right across from the theater. Özsoy’s company eventually left Galata, like many other Beyoğlu theatres that were forced out by rising rents and redevelopment. Walking down Büyük Hendek Caddesi, we spoke to a shopkeeper who remembered that there had been a theatre there, but wondered how long these testimonies would last in a rapidly transforming district.

Our final trek on that day was from Karaköy to Kabataş, including a walk through the Istanbul Modern Museum and the GalataPort shopping mall complex. We concluded that this was perhaps the most surreal face of Istanbul’s gentrification – approaching the coast from the direction of Karaköy, we could only access the water by walking through the security apparatus of a fancy retailer. From Kabataş we took the metro to Kurtuluş, where we visited BomontiAda, the cultural complex housed in the renovated Bomonti Beer Factory. Here, we considered the juxtaposition of different scales, as we observed the Hilton looming over the former industrial site. Our final destination for the day was Tarlabaşı, where we looked for signs of the famed Manastır or Istanbul Sanat Merkezi. This was where the first generation of Istanbul’s “alternative” theatre scene sought shelter in the 1990s. The building had been swallowed on all sides by Taksim 360, the heavily contested luxury housing complex that now adjoins the Tarlabaşı Boulevard.

We ended our trip with a performance of Öteki Venedik Taciri, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice at Kumbaracı50. At the end of the play, when Shylock left Portia’s courtroom, disheveled and stunned by his total dispossession, the troupe played a soundtrack that suggested the “sounds” of the Istanbul pogroms of 1955, when Beyoğlu’s Greek and other non-Muslim communities were attacked by Turkish mobs. This was a fitting end to our itinerary, because Istanbul’s theaters both past and present, are deeply intertwined with the city’s non-Muslim history, neighborhoods, and dispossessions. The next challenge awaits: how to tell this story in relation to those of Warsaw, London, Paris, and Berlin.