DÜNYADA (ON EARTH) to Return to London for Voilà! Theatre Festival

Mehmet Ali Nuroğlu will return to London this November with Dünyada (On Earth), his intimate, darkly funny reimagining of Will Eno's Title and Deed. Following performances in Istanbul, at Camden Fringe and at Thessaloniki Fringe, the solo show comes to The Space for three performances as part of Voilà! Theatre Festival 2026, asking how we find our places on earth.

A man arrives with a suitcase and a camera. He talks about his parents, the people he has loved, the customs of home and the peculiar business of being alive. His thoughts wander, double back and catch him by surprise. A joke can open onto grief; an ordinary memory can suddenly feel like your own. Through one stranger's attempt to make himself understood, the play makes room for the parts of ourselves we carry from place to place.

Nuroğlu received the Performer of the Year award in the Solo Performance category at Türkiye's 2026 TEB Theatre Critics' Awards. The production also earned three nominations: Play of the Year, Director of the Year and Performer of the Year - Solo Performance. The jury recognised his integration of live camera, lighting and sound into the acting itself, reshaping the relationship between storyteller and audience. His distinctive stage language carries a performance rich in feeling and subtle in its smallest shifts of voice, expression and attention.

The production reimagines a celebrated text by Pulitzer Prize finalist and former Princeton Hodder Fellow Will Eno. Title and Deed has also received a 2013 Lucille Lortel nomination for Outstanding Solo Show.

The work also draws on Nuroğlu's own experience of repeatedly leaving home. 'As the child of a soldier, I grew up changing cities and schools every two or three years. Familiar faces and places would constantly be replaced by strangers,' he says. That history gives this solo work its deeply personal character. It opens a space for inner growth: living with the traces of trauma, tending to old hurts and finding the courage to begin again. Each audience member is invited to recognise something of their own and take a small piece away.

A close-up catches a passing expression. Dust in a beam of light becomes snow. A familiar word repeats until it starts to sound strange. Live images, sound and music by Çağrı Sinci give an abstract, sensory extension to Eno's words, carrying feeling into the places where language reaches its limits. As the camera turns towards the audience, the people sharing the room become part of the story. Theatreland Adventures called the Camden performance 'Intimate, unique and technically impressive'.

Written in English, reimagined in Turkish and performed by Nuroğlu in both languages, Dünyada (on earth) has grown through encounters with different audiences. Its multilanguage performances at Voilà! belong naturally in a festival celebrating voices across languages and borders. English need not be your first language to find a way into this work: gesture, music and images offer other routes into its emotional life, while the search for the right word is already part of the stranger's story.