About the Project
It’s 1912 in the Eastern European town of Kirklareli, and Yusef is finally coming home. After spending the past several years as a Janissary (a member of the sultan’s elite private guard), he is met with joy and disbelief by his family and friends, who expected him to be dead after being kidnapped by the sultan as a young teenager. However, Yusef soon realizes that while he was living it up in the royal palace, his beloved Ottoman Empire was falling into complete and utter disrepair and is now the laughingstock of the continent. At the insistence of father (a washed-up local politician), Yusef’s family and friends all find themselves roped into a scheme at the community assembly to convince other government officials that the Ottoman Empire is on life support and that it’s time to finally pull the plug. How do they do that? With an elaborate puppet show, of course. But when things go from bad to worse to utter chaos, the sultan makes an ill-timed appearance and recognizes his favorite escaped guard, and his mother makes out with a horse, Yusef has to confront everything he knows about life, politics and what it truly means to mourn a dying way of life. It’s part ridiculous farce, part historical fiction and part autopsy of imperialism as we know it.
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Production Team
