STORIES WILL NOT MEND THIS BROKEN WORLD

Stories Will Not Mend This Broken World, presented by The Brick and Identity Crisis Theater arrives as a work shaped by catastrophe but intentionally resistant to tidy resolution. Written by Will Johnson and directed by Handan Ozbilgin, the play traces the emotional fallout of the 2023 earthquake that devastated Turkey and Northern Syria. A disaster that killed 56,000 people and left countless more displaced.

Johnson’s script draws from his visit to an Istanbul theater company shortly after the earthquake, and the result is a piece preoccupied less with documenting trauma than with the disorienting ways grief travels through everyday interactions.

Ozbilgin’s direction emphasizes that language falters under extreme circumstances. Moving between English, Turkish, and Spanish, the production treats miscommunication not as a barrier but as a truthful reflection of crisis. Some moments feel deliberately opaque; others become unexpectedly intimate. This trilingual approach underscores the instability of meaning itself, the sense that even the most heartfelt gestures can’t quite hold the weight of what has happened.

Set in a theater’s cramped green room, the play follows a group of artists attempting to host a celebration while quietly absorbing the psychic aftershocks of disaster. The ensemble: Doğa Özbilun, Gamze Ceylan, Defne Özkan, Francisco Arcila, and Ed Jr. Cardenas brings a raw volatility to the material. They shift rapidly between gallows humor and private unraveling, capturing the uncomfortable friction of performing normalcy when the world has rendered normalcy absurd.

They dance and hold hands as they run circles around the table, laughing and cheering. The next moment, they hold each other, crying. At its strongest, the production exposes the rituals of hospitality as both coping mechanisms and cultural obligations. Still, the play’s central question, “What is the value of art in a world that’s collapsing?” lingers more as provocation than conclusion.

Stories Will Not Mend This Broken World doesn’t try to answer it, and perhaps wisely so. What it offers instead is a portrait of people insisting on connection even as they recognize its futility: “I think it’s good sometimes, not to think? No?”
The line lands like a confession, and maybe a warning.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Frankie Lehr