It is always interesting to follow the character arc of a social moment and finally see the kind of artwork they produce. This is how I approached Reka Kolektif’s play "Jonas’la Evlenmek ("Marrying Jonas"), about four hopefuls who enter a contest to be the one to marry the Swedish Jonas and live with him in his fairyland country.

The connected, mobile and prosperous years that just preceded the coronavirus pandemic in Türkiye saw the rise of a middle-class movement that decided that there was no future for the clever and the talented in Türkiye. I can’t remember the exact year, but I remember sitting at a cafe and listening to a medical doctor at the next table talk about how they were attending a German language course to start a life in the promised land. Social media was full of videos about where to apply and how to settle in various parts of Europe. I remember sitting at a restaurant in Frankfurt and the next table being patronized by a group of clearly well-off and urban Turkish women, exchanging tips about how to settle into their new lives. I will never forget what one of them said, announcing her views not just to the table but the whole restaurant: "I still have a house and a car back in Türkiye and can go back any moment, but this is where I want to raise my kid." So a different class of "immigrant" altogether.

Post-COVID-19 things look a bit different. Travel isn’t as cheap as it used to be, and all states have cut back on public spending. Videos have started to trickle down to social media, where middle-class Turks who want to raise their children in Europe are complaining about how they have to treat everyone equally, how expensive it is to get various sorts of helpers for their "I have a home and a car and everything else" lifestyle. And it is exactly this moment that "Marrying Jonas," written by Aslı Ekici, captures.

In Ekici’s play, the contestants, except for the woman who is running a vegan food business, don’t exactly fit this type. Apart from the blond vegan, we have a Kurdish man who has attempted and failed at running a cafe, a dancer whose art is naturally not understood by Turkish blockheads and a "Boğaziçi sociology student" who is against all kinds of binarisms. Having packed all these dissenting and discursive identities into her play, Ekici touches on the surface of all and plays their differences to comic effect. To really delve into what motivates these people to leave and how their understanding of Europe is skewed would probably need a multi-season series, but Ekici’s short offering is an important first step in identifying an illusion.

The mechanics of this "marriage contest" are never made quite clear in the play. Honestly, no one is there for that: We are there to laugh at the follies of compatriots in trying to please Europe and to naturally find ourselves in them. The stage is set up like the "Big Brother" house, an open-plan kitchen with a little bathroom to the side. And like in various reality shows, there is a "confession camera" where the characters share their secrets and stories with us. And that is what we are at the theater for, and not to find out who wins the competition.

Various tasks are relayed to the contestants, and as we watch them try to do them, we’re never sure if they’ve succeeded in completing them or who is leading in the game. The first round is a set of questions they need to answer, and even that round could have been a one-hour play on its own. The first question is about Sweden’s democracy, and our vegan entrepreneur waxes lyrical about its characteristics, bringing in the importance of the royal family. The irony is dramatically lost on the other contestants and, no doubt, some members of the audience. Then the "Boğaziçi sociology student" gets the "Palestine and Israel" question, and she starts a lecture on Zionism, but just like the vegan entrepreneur gets cut off just as she is about to get going.

Ekici leaves the audience to imagine how the rest of all these conversations would go, all according to their own proclivities. Would our contestants talk about how Swedish democracy detained Greta Thunberg when she protested against Israel’s participation in the Eurovision in Malmö? The play does not go there, and for its size and ambition, we do not expect it to. The audience has already understood what the play wants to do and judges it only on those grounds: the way people will hold on to an idea of a savior when they find themselves at an impasse.

There are subtle and not-so-subtle jokes and infighting between the contestants. While the three of them have Turkish tea, the fourth looks down at them as Turkish peasants who don’t savor coffee. One of them who praises Sweden for its human rights turns out to have posted racist remarks online. The one who seems to be the most "woke" turns out to have family connections to the TV station where the program is aired. It is clear that Ekici is not seeking pure sympathy for her characters.

I was lucky enough to sit next to a person who worked like a barometer for the audience and gave all the right responses. She sighed with the contestants as they recounted their difficulties in Türkiye and laughed heartily when the contestants were asked to do silly things. The uneasiest laughter, however, was when our hopefuls had to make the Swedish delicacy "black pudding," made from pig’s blood. Speaking about and to a particular audience, naturally, Ekici’s group of contestants did not include a religious candidate, so the disgust that the contestants displayed at the recipe was physical nausea and, in two instances, vegetarianism. Ekici’s message with "Marrying Jonas" hits hardest at that moment: You may be leaving Türkiye because your values may not align with the majority, but your designated savior may not share all your values either.