[The Guardian] Hamlet takes a feminist turn in Turkey

When a group of farmers' wives in a remote village in Turkey staged Hamlet earlier this month, it was the sheer exoticism that attracted the local media. The Prince of Denmark appeared on stage in the baggy shalwar of an Anatolian peasant.

Gravediggers launched into bawdy Turkish traditional songs. "Hamlet becomes Hamit," ran the headlines. Fair enough. But it's this slightly patronising approach that drove the members of the Arslanköy Women's Theatre Group on to the stage in the first place. "We're uneducated, we're women, we're villagers and so we don't count: that's the general view," says Ümmiye Koçak, the 52-year old who abridged the play, directed it and played the eponymous lead. For her [Koçak], and the women working with her, theatre has become a platform to confirm they exist.