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Dream of Hamlet

Hulagu, Ayhan 2021

Dream of Hamlet is a modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in shadow theatre. After moving to America and settling down there, Karagoz sets up a theatre with a close friend and decides to stage Shakespeare’s immortal piece of work. When the characters of Hamlet were reincarnated in different costumes and shapes in a Karagoz performance, what appears is a colorful and robust experimental theatre full of laughter, quick-witted humor and irony. In this lively show, the Anatolian puppet theatre Karagoz, a living tradition with 700 years of history, brings a modernist approach to the British playwright Shakespeare’s signature play by reconstructing its characters and theme in an entirely different context. Read More

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Kral Lear (King Lear)

Coleman, Basil 1981

The productions of King Lear in Turkey over the years have included many famous actors playing the title role: Cüneyt Gökçer in 1958 and 1980, Çetin Tekindor in 2002, and Haluk Bilginer in 2018. King Lear is a play often read but rarely performed for many reasons one of which is the need for a stellar cast, even in the small roles. Cüneyt Gökçer, who also served as the General Art Director of the Turkish State Theatres (Devlet Tiyatroları) between 1958 and 1983, takes a bold step himself, and takes on Lear, one of the world’s most tragic figures. Read More

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Kıbrıslı William Shakespeare (Cypriot William Shakespeare)

Erçin, Gülşen; Vaiz, Mehmet Ekin 2020

In this hilarious retelling of Shakespeare’s life and writing process, the Turkish Cypriot comedians Mehmet Ekin Vaiz and Gülşen Erçin imagine William Shakespeare as a matrilocal who moves to Cyprus. Vaiz’s Shakespeare has an unhappy life as a dairyman and catalyses his frustration with his dominant wife and his daily chores of cleaning cow dungs by revising his plays that apparently had first happy endings into tragic stories. Further motivated by his excessive drinking of the local alcoholic drink zivania, this parodic retelling of the Cypriot William Shakespeare ends with a promotion of Othello, the local zivania trademark. Read More

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Kral “Soyatrım” Lear (“My Fool” King Lear)

Sertdemir, Yiğit 2014

Yiğit Serdemir’s Kral “Soyatrım” Lear (“My Fool” King Lear) is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Jointly produced by Pangar and Altıdan Sonra theatre companies in 2014, it tells the story of King Lear from the point-of-view of Lear’s fool who meets other fools who become both audiences and performers of this storytelling. Tomris İncer, Berkay Ateş, Demet Evgar, Okan Yalabık, Sezin Akbaşoğulları, Umut Kurt and Yiğit Sertdemir perform multiple roles in this dream-like and grotesque adaptation that foregrounds human follies through the caricature-like depiction of the several fools in the play. Live music accompanies the bells of the motley-clad fools who try to make sense of the obvious follies committed by the titular character of Shakespeare’s play. The use of puppets between puppet and puppeteer along with the juxtaposition of the fool and the king show how social demarcations are actually void and non-existent. Read More

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7 Şekspir Müzikali (7 Shakespeares Musical)

Aydoğan, Kemal 2009-2011

Building upon Jacques’ theatrum mundi trope, 7 Şekspir Müzikali visualises the seven ages of man from cradle to grave. Being a collection of several excerpts from different translators, including those made by the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) alum Haluk Bilginer (1954-…) himself, the musical is built upon Bilginer’s almost one person performance where the rest of the cast as female fools accompany his dancing and singing through a well-choreographed pace. Performing all seven stages of man singlehandedly by referring to social and theatrical issues alike, Bilginer displays his great acting and life-long love relationship with Shakespeare in this almost two-hour musical. Read More

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Hamlet

Kasapoğlu, Işıl 2013-2014

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. Read More

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Murat ile Nazlı (Murat and Nazlı) – Romeo and Juliet

Ün, Memduh 1972

Murat ile Nazlı (Murat and Nazlı) is a film directed by Memduh Ün in 1972. Domesticising the play’s setting to the Turkish countryside, the film depicts how a blood feud separates two lovers, performed by Cüneyt Arkın and Fatma Girik, for many years only to re-unite them in their old age. Read More

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İkinci Katil (The Second Murderer) – Macbeth

Erdenk, Barış 2017-2018

Serhat Yiğit’s İkinci Katil (2017-2018), performed by the Ankara State Theatre, is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and is reminiscent of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966), by focusing on minor characters and their otherwise disregarded and peripheral microcosms. However, different from the post-modern self-reflexivity of Stoppard’s play, Yiğit uses an Aristotelian model in his play. Read More

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Hayat Bayram Olsa (If Life were a Holiday) – Romeo and Juliet

Aksoy, Orhan 1973

Hayat Bayram Olsa (If Life were a Holiday) is a film directed by Orhan Aksoy in 1973. It is a loose and domesticised adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Set in a small town in the seaside where again feuding families try to prevent a happy ending for the lovers, now performed by Kadir İnanır and Hülya Koçyiğit. Read More

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Hırçın Kız (The Taming of the Shrew)

Özbirgül, Bülent 2018

Hırçın Kız is a production of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew staged by the Süleyman Demirel University’s Department of Performing Arts at the 2018 International Shakespeare Festival in Isparta, Turkey. Read More