Shay Mace
An empty stage holds two ominous portents for the next 45 minutes – an empty chair and a vast set of looming projected phrases on a screen. We have been told there is no performer for this show, but we do have his words, in the form of a letter written to the prospective audience. TEMPORARY AUTHORIZATION is Ozan Bingöl’s social experiment to see if an audience will overcome an overbearing bureaucratic body that tells us it has our, and his, best interests at heart. It is an unparalleled and fascinating theatrical experience, in which you are likely to need to be prepared to fully participate, if you want to feel the unique embrace it offers.
Before long, we are asked if we as an audience want the performance to continue. It is the first test in what will become many as to whether we are willing to undertake the instructions given to us by a nameless, faceless organisation projecting words onto the screen, or whether we wish to engage with the humanity of Ozan, the show’s author, by resisting its attempts to enforce authority upon us. Depending on the audience who enters the space, any myriad number of outcomes are possible, as we are put to task in deciding the fate of the words written for us, whether freedom of expression is worth the price of resistance, and if a personal story can be trusted in the hands of someone else.
Ephemerality is at the heart of Bingöl’s performance philosophy, which develops in the latter half of the piece when a number of audience members are asked to take to the stage and read postcards from his home town of Istanbul. It is herein that we see what lies underneath the hood of TEMPORARY AUTHORIZATION, an attempt to force upon the audience the same bureaucracy that Bingöl has faced in his efforts to remain within the European Union and obtain Belgian residency. We are temporarily authorised to read his words, just as he is temporarily authorised to exist in Belgium as a Turkish immigrant. It is a concept that deserves a stage and a concept as fascinating as this, but also needs further development to become the main talking point as you leave the show.
In fact, after leaving the show, the largest discussion came about as to how much of what we had just witnessed, nay, taken part in, was decided before we entered the space. Conversations came around the table about whether some people had been planted, whether the show would truly have ‘ended’ if we had agreed to it doing so, and what would have happened if someone who wasn’t as proficient and profoundly good at reading Bingöl’s words as the one in our showing. These are valuable, valid conversations, but leave a fair distance form the core subject matter of the show and its goals to make us feel like we too are experiencing the vast precarity of someone in Bingöl’s position as a marginalised immigrant.
Game theory here hands the audience the reins, which opens up huge questions about collective responsibility, giving voice to the oppressed, and overturning turgid oppressive systems when they exhume the humanity from us. There’s a fuller form to be found to Bingöl’s deeply personal piece, and that will only come as it continues to tour, to experiment with its audiences, and let its audiences experiment with it.
Recommended Drink: Do as our selected reader did, and politely ask the show assistant if you can take your beer up on stage with you.
Performances of TEMPORARY AUTHORIZATION have now concluded at Thessaloniki Fringe 2026. If you want to experience this unique show, follow it to Voila! Theatre Festival in London at Theatro Technis on November 21st from 17:00 (45mins). Tickets are available through the Voila! Theatre Festival Online Box Office.
Sarah Kher-Bek
