Gaining the wisdom to say ‘I don’t know’
Evren Odcikin: Rough spell shaped director’s approach
Leading rehearsal for TheatreFirst’s “HeLa,” director Evren Odcikin typically begins each note with “I’m curious about” or “I’m wondering if.” Occasionally, he gives a lengthy, considered analysis, only to immediately unravel it: “Is that true, though?”
That constant questioning sounds natural for the 36-year-old director as he brings to life the story of Henrietta Lacks, the midcentury African American woman whose cancer cells were removed and used for science without her consent, going on to contribute to a variety of medical breakthroughs, from in vitro fertility treatments to the polio vaccine.
But it took being “broken” for Odcikin (pronounced “Odd-chicken”) to be comfortable with uncertainty in the rehearsal room — and to come into his own as a theater director.
Odcikin, who grew up in Istanbul, never thought he’d have a career as a theater artist. “My father was a math teacher, my
mother was a physics teacher, my sister’s a computer scientist programmer, and my brother is a trained accountant,” he says before rehearsal at Live Oak Theater, where “HeLa,” written by Lauren Gunderson and Geetha Reddy, opens Monday, May 22.
Odcikin himself got a full ride to Princeton to study computer science and become an engineer. Still, all his family pursued the arts on the side; he assumed he would follow a similar path.
In college, however, he realized theater was “the one place where I felt the most like myself.” Most of the time, he says, “I’m very harsh on myself, and the one place where that goes away most clearly is rehearsal.” He has to be so focused on the material, he says, that “I can’t actually be beside myself judging what I’m doing.”
Self-criticism still came after the fact, though. He says that the first full play he directed, “Macbeth,” was “actually quite good . ... But it didn’t sing.”
“It was too perfect. Everything was worked out too much. I think as a director, we all get started because we kind of want to tell people what to do and we think we have all the answers.” In his “Macbeth,” he says, “any question that could have come up was answered before we started — because I thought that was directing.”
That approach stopped working in 2012, when he directed “Invasion!” for Crowded Fire.
“That was a really difficult time in my personal life,” Odcikin says. “I didn’t have my full brainpower. I just couldn’t figure it out.” Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s play tackles antiMuslim prejudices and constantly shifts its frame of reference, each new scene imploding the story you thought the last was telling. Not firing on every intellectual cylinder, Odcikin had to answer collaborators’ questions with “I don’t
“HeLa”: Written by Lauren Gunderson and Geetha Reddy. Dramaturgy by Lisa Marie Rollins. Directed by Evren Odcikin. Through June 17. $20-$35. Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. www.theatrefirst.com know; what do you think?” The result was one of his favorite shows he’s directed.
Months later, when his life was more in order, he reassessed his directing approach: “‘OK, I did that when I was broken. Is there a way that I could do that same thing when I’m not?’ So the next few productions, I purposefully started using ‘I don’t know.’ ”
Actor Denmo Ibrahim calls Odcikin’s relentless experimentation and playfulness one of his “superpowers.” She remembers that in directing one particularly poignant scene in “I Call My Brothers,” at Crowded Fire, “he didn’t mess with or impose anything on what I wanted or didn’t want. He gave me a lot of breathing room. I think it’s really powerful when a director knows when to give an actor space and not be granular on every moment. If I was in his place, I would have been all up in my grill!”
Since then, “I don’t know” has carried Odcikin far — and into a busy calendar. Coming collaborations include National Queer Arts Festival, Bay Area Playwrights Festival and InterAct in Philadelphia. He’s already worked outside the region, at Cleveland Public Theater, thanks to his National Directors Fellowship with the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.
Locally, in addition to TheatreFirst and Crowded Fire, Odcikin has directed for Impact Theatre, Custom Made, Brava and especially for Golden Thread Productions, which in 2015 created a full-time position — director of marketing and new plays — just for him. Executive Artistic Director Torange Yeghiazarian says she values Odcikin as a director because he “thinks of his work as serving the play. Sometimes directors come, and they have their own vision: ‘I would like to stage “Hamlet” in this way.’ He reads the play, and he asks, ‘What does this play mean? What is the playwright telling me?’ ”
Playwright Yussef El Guindi, who has worked with Odcikin on “Language Rooms” among other projects, calls Odcikin a “meat-and-potatoes director” for the way he grounds his direction in a script as opposed to a lofty concept.
But if his direction is grounded, it’s also open to mystery, says playwright Mona Mansour, whose “Urge for Going” Odcikin directed. She remembers first talking to him, about a reading of hers: “He was like, ‘I don’t know what happened in that last scene — but something amazing happened.’ He has this comfort with the unknown, an embrace of the unknown.” It’s a way of not answering every question, yet not being vague, she says. “The really confident directors don’t try to pin that stuff down all the time.”