Studio Oyuncuları’s most recent production Io premiered on November 13, 2019, as the inaugural stage offering of the 23rd Istanbul Theater Festival. The staging of this play and its present-day text based on Greek myths challenges the mythological narratives of the West. Io is a nymph known in classical mythological texts as the princess of Argos and daughter of the river god Inachus. The play discusses concepts emanating from the revelation of biases in representations of the tragic hero Io by reconsidering the narratives based on her character. In this context, the idea of the tragic from the contemporary point of view and the political significance of revisiting myths and reviewing their functions in structuring societies are discussed via artistic performance.

The playwright and director of Io, Şahika Tekand, disassembles the mythological discourse functioning as the foundation of the Western society through an aesthetic deconstruction of the myths that construct the narratives surrounding this character. Therefore, this study resorted to the theories mooted by the anthropologist and philosopher René Girard to dramaturgically analyze how this deconstruction works its way artistically through the play. Girard presented one of the most comprehensive perspectives on the functioning of myths in modern Western society, contemplating the relationship between tragedies, mythologies, and history; the social role discharged by myths; and the concept of the tragic. To accomplish the study objectives, a conceptual axis was drawn from Claude Levi-Strauss to Girard to better elucidate the stated ideas.

Io asks ethical questions about human existence by associating the concept of the tragic with the blindness, deafness, and amnesia of society in the face of the violence that humanity is currently subjected to in contemporary global systems. Hence, this article examines how the notion of the tragic is handled in Io by utilizing the conceptual constructs of the scapegoat and sacrifice, components of Girard’s theory of tragedy, to scrutinize the myths of this ancient hero. The study’s rationale establishes a dramaturgical link between the play and Girard’s approach, which elucidates the use of narratives and discourses to effect the transformation of historical consciousness into a mechanism that legitimizes violence in societies. Accordingly, this paper aims to contribute to the relevant scholarship by enlightening the dramaturgical foundation of the text and staging of Studio Oyuncuları’s Io, rather than attempting to offer a critical discussion of Girard’s approach to the concept of the tragic.

Io asks ethical questions about human existence by associating the concept of the tragic with the blindness, deafness, and amnesia of society in the face of the violence that humanity is currently subjected to in contemporary global systems. Hence, this article examines how the notion of the tragic is handled in Io by utilizing the conceptual constructs of the scapegoat and sacrifice, components of Girard’s theory of tragedy, to scrutinize the myths of this ancient hero. The study’s rationale establishes a dramaturgical link between the play and Girard’s approach, which elucidates the use of narratives and discourses to effect the transformation of historical consciousness into a mechanism that legitimizes violence in societies. Accordingly, this paper aims to contribute to the relevant scholarship by enlightening the dramaturgical foundation of the text and staging of Studio Oyuncuları’s Io, rather than attempting to offer a critical discussion of Girard’s approach to the concept of the tragic.

Girard analyzes the tragic cycle of the system mentioned here via the phenomena of the scapegoat and victim. This perspective illuminates how violence operates via a historical mechanism. Girard points to the persecution that occurs through narratives that reveal the views of the writers of history. In directing the viewer’s gaze to this persecution, Io aims to express that violence exists both in the act of persecution and its consequent distortions, oblivion, and inaction. In the last episode of the play, Prometheus extends an invitation to humanity to claim its power and will instead of accepting the role of again becoming the persecutor in the cycle of violence.

To conclude, the text and the staging of Io criticizes myths, heroes, anti-heroes, and indeed every icon that humanity has created to enable the functioning of the contemporary world order in which we live. In so doing, Io’s text and staging reveal the veiled violence that forms the essence of the Western society, proposing that real change can be achieved by a radical confrontation and an exodus from the cycle of the system.