Hamlet (Kasapoğlu, 2013-2014)

Hamlet

A one-person performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet directed by Işıl Kasapoğlu and performed by Bülent Emin Yarar. It is an outstanding performance as part of the Shakespeare Year and Shakespeare Week celebrations of Shakespeare’s 450th birthday conducted by the State Theatres. Along with Yarar’s storytelling, his use of props like puppets and fabrics, and the use of a nutshell-like construction for the stage that opened and closed itself at the beginning and the end of the play, Hamlet indeed becomes “bounded in a nutshell” to consider himself “a king of infinite space” (2.2.273-4) in the rather liberating claustrophobia the stage construction creates.

Cast

Bülent Emin Yarar

Production Team

Costume and Stage Manager
Hakan Dündar

Dramaturgy
Zeynep Avcı

Lighting
Cem Yılmazer

Translator
Sabahattin Eyüboğlu

For more information, visit Devlet Tiyatrolar Genel Müdürlüğü.

Poster featuring Bülent Emin Yarar using puppetry for the play-within-the-play scene in Hamlet (2013-2014), image from SanatAtak.

Further Reading

Öğütcü, Murat. “Contemporary Turkish Shakespeares: New Breath to Old Lives.” Early Modern Liveness: Mediating Presence in Text, Stage and Screen. Eds. Danielle Rosvally and Donovan Sherman. London: Arden, 2023. 145-169.

Production notes provided by Associate Professor Dr. Murat Öğütcü, Adıyaman University, Turkey.