2023 / Immersive Experience - Lasts approx. 80'
Ugly
Ugly (Çirkin) is immersive theatre by XTOPIA at Hope Alkazar. It tells a surreal story of betrayal across centuries, pairing mythology and fairy-tale references with live performance, spatial design, and real-time generative visuals across roughly eighty minutes.
My contribution was the TouchDesigner system that made the visual production workable in that room. Anamorphic rendering kept generative imagery legible from the audience's viewpoint inside a mapped environment; rehearsals ran real-time, while shows moved through Resolume partitions and loops timed to actors rather than a fixed timeline disconnected from the room.
I also found a practical way to move the venue mapping into Resolume without a costly remapping pass, saving production budget and keeping iteration possible late in the schedule. Several narrative parts drew from this shared system; Burak Dirgen and Amir Ahmadoglu developed others in TouchDesigner and Cinema 4D on parallel tracks.
The hardest problems were theatrical, not technical: timing that follows performers, generative motion that feels narrated rather than random, live control that doesn't announce itself. The digital layer sits inside the play's breath, not above it.
Ugly combines theatre, narration, and digital installation inside an immersive stage environment. The production moves through a surreal story of betrayal across centuries, pairing mythology and fairy-tale references with real-time visuals, spatial design, and live performance. My role focused on the creative technology and visual system: building generative visuals that could sit inside the performance without breaking the rhythm of the stage.
Credits
Playwright: Firuze Engin
Director: Güray Dinçol
Performers: Nihal Yalçın, Onur Berk Arslanoğlu
Creative Producer: Yağmur Dolkun
Stage & Production Design: Veli Kahraman
Immersive Art Directors: Lalin Akalan, Amir Ahmadoglu
Immersive Production: XTOPIA
Creative Technologist: Çağatay Güçlü
Music: Ahmet Kenan Bilgic
Visual Artists: Amir Ahmadoglu, Burak Dirgen, Çağatay Güçlü
Choreographer: Büşra Firidin
Costume Design: Candan Seda Balaban
Lighting Design: Cem Yılmazer
Sound Design: Turgut Mavuk
Makeup and Hair Design: Sezen Yeniçeri Can
Assistant Director: Aslı Ekici
Light Operator: Can Çelik
Sound Operator: Arın Kamiloğlu
Video Operator: Seda Yilmaz, Gökhan Gülçebi
Production Administrator: Eyüp Çelik
Director Assistant : Mislina Kurtuldu
Production Coordinator: Sevval Erdinç, Sıla Kenar
Stage Manager: Umut Rışvanlı
Stage Design Assistant: Lidya Delfin Eraslan
Costume Design Assistant: İsmet Efe Arslan
Visual Design: Ozge Guven
Photography: Murat Kahya
Stage Photography: Salih Üstündağ
Making off Documentary: Rıza Efe Reis, Efe Subaş
Co-Production: BKM, Institute of Time, Betaland Audiovisual, XTOPIA, Comfortnoise
