Symposium O: Love Past Apocalypse

- Love! That’s what we’re doing today, guys. Look at this stage. Look at this crowd. 

I’m low key so excited to finally see something in this place that isn’t about how everything’s mid because of AI. Love!

A group of scholars, artists, students, and workers gather for Symposium O: Love Past Apocalypse. They've come to ask us what love can still mean in the face of destruction and uncertainty. It seems like nothing goes right in the modern search for love. Caught between love as concept and love as action, we find ourselves trapped inside an event that refuses to become what we desire. Together, we struggle with the refusal and create a shared experience.

Özlem Özhabeş (Director)

Özlem Özhabeş is a theatre director, performer and educator who likes to peel back the layers of a story—to see what its words, bodies and silences might be hiding. Her work moves between devising, reimagining classics and cross-cultural storytelling, with a particular interest in voice, memory and feminist dramaturgy.

Her practice has taken her from Istanbul to London, Florence and Abu Dhabi. Her directing credits include Subj, in which she also performs, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Nora, Hamlet and By the Bog of Cats. She previously collaborated with Şahika Tekand at Studio Oyuncuları and taught at Florence’s Oltrarno Acting School.

Currently a Visiting Lecturer in Theatre at NYU Abu Dhabi, Özlem previously led Acting and Voice at Kadir Has University. Beyond the rehearsal room, she founded the Datça Theatre Summer Camp and directed ACT, a Swedish Institute-funded project exploring artistic freedom and young people’s perspectives in the arts. She also served as executive director of Four Notes, an arts project for children affected by the earthquake, developed in collaboration with the Embassy of the Netherlands.

Sîpan Sezgin Tekin (Assistant Director)

Sîpan Sezgin Tekin (Amed/Kurdistan 1996 – TR/NL) is an actor, performer, theatermaker, director, and storyteller. His work explores political and historical narratives through the embodied use of language, focusing on multilingualism, the physicality and performativity of language, and its relationship to identity and borders. Drawing from oral storytelling traditions, Tekin creates experimental performances that blur the lines between fiction and reality, often engaging audiences through immersive and participatory situations.

TK Hay (Set Designer)

TK is an award-winning Singaporean theater designer based in London.

Theater includes Scenes from a Repatriation (Royal Court), Pea and The Princess (Polka), The Jungle Book (Theatre by the Lake), My Father’s Fable (Bush), Little Shop of Horrors (Octagon Bolton, Ipswich New Wolsey, Theatre by the Lake, Hull Truck), Mayflies (York Royal), We Will Be Who We Are (Vault Festival), Beginning (Royal Exchange), The Making of a Monster (Wales Millenium Centre), Constellations (Stephen Joseph), The Apology, Tsunagu/Connect (New Earth), An Adventure (Octagon Bolton), Brenda’s Got a Baby (New Diorama), The Serangoon Gardens Techno Party of 1993, G*d is a Woman (Wild Rice), Mosaic (Esplanade), Re:Assembly, Assembly (Drama Box), The Good, The Bad and The Sholay (Checkpoint), Karius and Baktus (Norwegian Cultural Centre)

Opera includes Iphigénie en Tauride, Alcina (The Opera People)

Awards include the Arts Foundation Futures Awards for Theatre (2025), The Stage Debut Awards for Best Designer (2022), the Linbury Prize for Stage Design (2019), and the Singapore National Arts Council Scholarship (2016).

Creative Team

Writer: Mitchell Atkinson 

Director: Özlem Özhabeş 

Producer: Sofia Morana 

Set Designer: TK Hay 

Costume Designer: Lily Moinette 

Video Designer: Burak Dinç 

Assistant Director: Sezgin Tekin 

Music By: Cristina Ioan & Julia Atkinson 

Project Manager : Sonya Armaghanyan