Arslan, perhaps because his diverse roots, Macedonian, Kosovar, Turkish, Belgian, Flemish, he somehow makes a reconstruction of texts, scenes, authors, images together to create a new structure where the unconscious has more or less equal rights as consciousness. In his words "The Act and the Dream have had sex with each other and had a child called Time."

 

In Turkey he acted in productions at City Theatre of Izmir and Yeni Asir Theatre Group where he was director-assistant. In Belgium, he directed and acted in productions of ATG from 1999 to 2005. 

 

He is a founder and artistic director of Platform Festival 0090 and curated the Theatre Festival of Belgium and Netherland in 2006. As a director, he established Theatre OnderHetVel in 2005; alongside with choreograph Eric Raeves and visual artist and stage designer Meryem Bayram. The layered diversity -in cultural background and artistic discipline- that the artistic team of Theatre OnderHetVel brought together, has reflected in the joint quest for artistic experiments titillating confrontation on the floor.

 

Important striking examples of artistic collaboration were the productions “Kamer en de Man” and “Hebben/Zijn”. In “PLOT” OnderHetVel investigated the relationship between the elements that constitute theatre. Furthermore Arslan and Meryem Bayram produced an installation in 2009 in Workspace Lokaal 0l – Antwerp, visual material to further our understanding of theater. In 2010 he stood alongside Guy Cassiers – Toneelhuis as artistic collaborator. And in early 2011 Arslan directed in his origin country Turkey the piece "Ve Veya Ya Da”. In 2012-2013 he made “The Room and the Man” in Istanbul that was presented in Istanbul, Brussels and London. In the season of 2013-14 he directed “Betrayal” of Harold Pinter and in 2015-2016 he directed ‘Hidden Face’ written by the Turkish Nobel price winner Orhan Pamuk’s.

 

From 2017 on he is one of the main directors of KVS in Brussels. For his first project in KVS he made “Nachtelijke Symposium”. In 2019 he started working on one of the most frequently performed classics of the twentieth century, Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? of Edward Albee from 1962.

 

www.mesutarslan.be