Norris Stages Turkish 'Death of a Salesman' in Istanbul
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- Rufus Norris stepped down as National Theatre director on 1 April 2025 after a decade at the helm, and his mother died of vascular dementia three weeks before his departure — she had not recognised him for three years prior to her death.
- After leaving the NT, Norris downsized from London to Fife, Scotland, on the sea with his partner playwright Tanya Ronder, and describes feeling "liberated" and free from the institutional scrutiny of running a national venue.
- Norris is directing a Turkish-language production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at Zorlu PAC in Istanbul, in an enormous 2,300-seat auditorium — his first post-NT directing gig, running until 16 June before returning in September.
- The Istanbul production stars Halit Ergenç, known for playing Sultan Suleiman in the Ottoman-era TV drama Magnificent Century, as Willy Loman, with set design by Es Devlin, choreography by Javier de Frutos, and a new translation by Hira Tekindor.
- Willy Loman's decline resonates personally for Norris: "she hadn't recognised me for three years before she died," he says of his mother, framing the role through the lens of dementia rather than the more familiar American-dream reading.
- Norris is writing a one-man play with an actor already cast, working on a film script, and has expressed openness to more international work, comparing his path to predecessors like Trevor Nunn (freelancing) and Nicholas Hytner (another building).
- Norris called UK narratives about an "original, glorious British past" "absolute bullshit," citing Huguenot, Russian Jewish, Irish, Jamaican and British Asian contributions, and explicitly tied the impulse to travel to a desire to step outside Britain's "theatre bubble."
Why it matters: Norris's choice of a 2,300-seat Turkish-language production as his first post-NT job signals an explicit exit from the British institutional orbit — he says he can now "go to Istanbul and do a show" without scrutiny. The political candour is equally significant: a former NT chief publicly calling contested historical narratives "absolute bullshit" is rare, and his framing of Willy Loman through dementia rather than the American dream also quietly repositions a canonical text.
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