INTERVIEW: A Digital Pint with… Büke Erkoç, on Exile, Memory, and the Invisible Grief of Survival

Content Warning: References to Suicide, Mental Health.

We’re counting down to Prague Fringe by shining a light on a number of shows headed to the festival next week. Büke Erkoç from NOK NOK! is the director-performer of The Future Looks Bright, adapted from Turkish author Sebnem İşigüzel’s novel of the same name (Hanene ay dogacak in Turkish). It follows one woman at a moment of internal reckoning, digging into her childhood in Türkiye. We caught up with Büke for a pixelated pint to unpack the show.

You can catch The Future Looks Bright as part of Prague Fringe at Museum of Alchemists – Divadlo from May 29th-31st at various times. Tickets are available through the Prague Fringe Online Box Office.

Jake: Hi Büke, start by telling us about the themes of your show The Future Looks Bright, and what the audience can expect.

Büke: The Future Looks Bright is a one-woman performance about exile, memory, and the invisible grief of survival. It’s adapted from three stories in Şebnem İşigüzel’s novel Hanene Ay Doğacak, a haunting work from Turkey that weaves the personal with the political. The play follows a woman who no longer knows how many times she has attempted suicide. In the performance, she begins to redesign this act in front of the audience—not as a cry for help, but as a conscious, deliberate gesture. Using poetic monologue, dark humour, and physical storytelling, the piece shifts between the psychological and the historical, the deeply intimate and the violently collective. Everything is told with just one object—a suitcase—that transforms into a bed, a building, a border gate, a coffin. It’s intense and emotionally charged (I guess).

Jake: Tell us about the process of creating a piece with difficult themes as yours, and what you’ve discovered along the way.

Büke: This piece came out of a personal and political urgency. I’m from Turkey, where political violence, censorship, femicide, and state repression are not abstract concepts—they are daily realities. I wanted to build something that didn’t explain this context for an outsider, but instead existed within it. I wasn’t interested in softening the material to make it digestible. What I’ve learned is that we often ask immigrants to be grateful, to present survival as success. But sometimes survival comes with guilt, silence, and contradiction. This play holds space for that contradiction. It doesn’t offer hope or resolution. It just refuses to lie.

Jake: What are you hoping the audience might take away from the experience, if anything?

Büke: I hope the audience walks away with a discomfort they’re not in a rush to solve. A recognition, maybe. For immigrants coming from an oppressed country like Turkey, I hope the piece feels like a mirror—one that doesn’t simplify or romanticize their experience. For other audience members, I hope it opens up a way of seeing grief and displacement that isn’t framed by headlines or statistics, but by the body, memory, and inherited trauma. The play doesn’t preach. It watches, it waits, it bleeds quietly.

Jake: Tell us about how the show has ended up being performed at Prague Fringe, and what you’re most excited for about the festival.

Büke: The Future Looks Bright is completely independent—I direct, perform, and produce it. That includes tech, touring, finance, outreach—everything. Alongside me, there’s a small group that supports me every step of the way. We do all of this without any institutional resources, and I find that kind of solidarity incredibly powerful. It’s not just about one show—it’s about standing by each other to make space for our voices. I know that many of us, as independent theatre makers across the world, go through the same thing, and every encounter we have with each other becomes another form of solidarity. That’s why Prague Fringe, and festivals like it, matter so much. They’re not just platforms; they’re places of artistic exchange and emotional resilience. I’m excited to share the work with a new audience and to be part of that larger community of risk-taking, resourceful artists.

Jake: Given the themes of Binge Fringe, if your show was a beverage of any kind (alcoholic, non-alcoholic – be as creative as you like!), what would it be and why?

Büke: It would be a fizzy, slightly ridiculous cocktail—bright in color, served with a paper umbrella, maybe even a sparkler. You find it in an unlabelled bottle at the back of an underground bar no one really talks about. The first sip makes you laugh—it’s playful, unexpected, almost too sweet. But then, mid-drink, the taste shifts. There’s a bitterness you didn’t anticipate, something that lingers in your throat and makes your stomach drop. You realize this isn’t just a joke—it’s a warning, a memory, a ghost in liquid form. It doesn’t shout. It stays with you quietly, long after the glass is empty.

A reminder – you can catch The Future Looks Bright as part of Prague Fringe at Museum of Alchemists – Divadlo from May 29th-31st at various times. Tickets are available through the Prague Fringe Online Box Office.