Transhistorical Dialogues: Recanonizing Shakespeare on the Contemporary Turkish Stage

Burak Urucu*

Abstract

Turkish theatre has a deeply rooted tradition in oral and performative narrative styles such as ortaoyunu, Karagöz shadow puppet plays, and meddah, which are integral to the country’s cultural heritage. This study examines how these traditions are interwoven into five recent Shakespearean adaptations produced by independent companies from Istanbul. By dissecting these select adaptations, the study conceptualizes the mechanics of their rewriting process, shaped by metatheatricality, recanonization, and repertoire. Due to its comparative structure encompassing multi-layered rewriting strategies and traditional aesthetics, this study is positioned to stimulate broader discussions about temporality, cultural memory, and transhistorical performance studies.
Part 1 explains the Adaptive Stage Matrix (ASM) and analyzes Baba Sahne’s Bir Baba Hamlet (A Father Hamlet 2017) and Öteki Tiyatro & Hayali Tasvir’s Venedikli Tacir (The Merchant of Venice 2024) through ASM.
Part 2 will be published in the June 2026 issue of Critical Stages. This part analyzes Moda Sahnesi’s Othello (2024), Nos Tiyatro’s Verona Çıkmazı (Verona Impasse 2024), and Yu Studio’s Othello! Seyircili İntikam Provası (Othello! A Revenge Rehearsal with the Audience 2023) through ASM and has the full bibliography of both parts.

Keywords: Shakespeare, adaptations, Turkish theatre, transhistorical stage, recanonization, metatheatricality, cultural repertoire

PART 1 Introduction

Turkish theatre derives its roots from an intriguingly rich blend of oral traditions, improvisational storytelling, and performative practices that have been generated and molded within the spheres of satire, ritual, and community engagement. Grounded in Ottoman multiculturalism and sociopolitical influences, as well as earlier Anatolian performative practices, certain tenets of traditional Turkish theatrical forms provide a versatile foundation that fosters metatheatricality as a transhistorical rewriting strategy in adaptations of Shakespeare and other canonical scripts recanonized on the Turkish stage.

Laughter and satire are fundamental elements in the development of traditional practices. Traditional forms such as meddah (solo storyteller), ortaoyunu (semi-improvised public performances), and Karagöz (shadow puppetry) all incorporate comic relief, direct audience interaction, immersion, and entertainment. Especially after the seventeenth century, when these traditional forms started to become ubiquitous in communal life, Karagöz puppeteers and ortaoyunu actors enjoyed an artistic freedom, particularly during festivals and royal celebrations. Within these liminal spaces, performers could humorously poke fun at, tease, and even impersonate the Sultan himself, an act that would have been unthinkable in other contexts (Yüksel 37).^[1] The theatrical conventions incorporating indirect satire, allegory, covert ridicule, and exaggerated characterization allowed them to generate social commentary under the guise of comedy. Despite being performed under an absolute monarchy, these performances capitalized on the ritualistic inversion of power that typically occurred during carnivals in European cultures.

“Ottoman imperial festivals [were seen] as ‘cultural performances’ where the social hierarchies were enacted/re-enacted” (Erdoğan İşkorkutan 20). For example, opium addicts were a part of Ottoman society, and their performances took place at “1582, 1675, and 1720 festivals” (Erdoğan İşkorkutan 134). Their “abnormal behaviors while under the influence of drugs” featured “performances in their own right” and attracted crowds as “things to be seen,” creating a “festive wisdom free from all norms, social restrictions, and seriousness” that evoked the Bakhtinian concept of “carnival and feasting” with an embedded carnivalesque transposition of authority, control, and power dynamics (Erdoğan İşkorkutan 134, 101). After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, theatre and particularly Shakespeare were “instrumentally used as a platform to spread progressive principles and reforms” enacted in the post-1923 institutionalization and Westernization of the arts in Republican Türkiye (Golban and Özgün 2). Shakespeare’s acknowledged status has served as a useful tool not only to familiarize Turkish audiences with Western theatrical practices and canonical narratives but also to promote a national, secular repertoire for the culture. This tendency continues to influence Turkish stage productions that grapple with adapting, and reworking Shakespeare’s legacy in modern Türkiye. The process of adapting Shakespeare with local idioms is not just a cultural transfer; it is also a popular tool for theater productions that strategically utilize it as a springboard to explore social criticism, commentary, and critique of sociopolitical issues.

This study positions itself within the cross-cultural journey between Shakespeare’s plays and their modern adaptations on the Turkish stage. It traces how urban, comic, non-religious traditional practices such as Karagöz, ortaoyunu, and meddah—mostly performed in Istanbul, the imperial capital, and to a lesser extent in smaller urban centers and trade cities—shape contemporary Shakespeare reinterpretations on the Turkish stage through their subversive energy, which blends improvisation, parody, and satire.

Here, it should be noted that the scope of this influence excludes ritual and devotional forms (semah and Mevlevi whirling) and seasonal village plays from Anatolia. In this vein, by analyzing five select, revoiced Shakespeare productions from the 2020s on Turkish stages, the study investigates how the enduring Shakespearean legacy is recoded and sustained through a multilayered process of recycling within Turkish cultural codes. Building on existing research on performance, theatre, adaptation, and intercultural translation, the study presents an alternative framework to the mechanics of adaptation, where the process of adapting canonical scripts (Shakespeare in this case) into Turkish stage productions takes place through local filters and traditional idioms. This approach, whose details will be illustrated in the following chapter, centers its structure around three practice-led, operative, and relational nodes: metatheatricality, recanonization, and repertoire (Taylor).

Conceptualizing an Adaptive Stage Matrix (ASM)

In Linda Hutcheon’s words, adaptation is “repetition without replication,” “…a creative and interpretive transposition of a recognizable other work…a kind of extended palimpsest…” and it “…always involves both (re-)interpretation and (re-)creation…” even as it is enacted through various shifts of medium and point of view (Hutcheon 7, 8, 33). Adaptations, therefore, modify the tone, focalization, emphasis, and concerns of the source text while typically preserving the essence of recognition and its aura, allowing the audience to recognize the palimpsest. However, Julie Sanders makes a distinction between adaptation and appropriation, mainly emphasizing the level of proximity and how explicitly the source is signaled, with a pronounced focus on the critical intent of the rewritten text. Appropriations also actively engage with the source text, yet they represent “a more decisive journey away from the informing text into a wholly new cultural product and domain,” where the appropriated text or texts are not always as clearly signaled or acknowledged (Sanders 35). The rewriting process is often driven by “a political or ethical commitment” by the playwright, director, or performer, and “the intertextual relationship [between the original and the adapted text] may be less explicit, more embedded”(Sanders 7, 3). There is certainly a continuum rather than a hard divide between the terms, where appropriations lead to more significant modifications during the process of adapting the source material.

The negotiation between borrowed and target scripts creates new contexts shaped and understood through cultural and performative frameworks. This has sparked scholarly discussion in various ways, such as the importance of cultural translation processing likened to an “hourglass” (Pavis 1), and the concept of “restored behavior” to highlight the transformative nature of performance (Schechner 33), and the idea that “the theatre […] seems to resist remains” and continues to circulate across bodies and time (Schneider 98). Moreover, archives and repertoires are distinguished, with the latter “allowing for an alternative perspective on historical processes of transnational contact” (Taylor 20). These perspectives, although they come from adjacent fields (performance, theatre, and intercultural studies), help us develop an understanding that adaptations and appropriations are not just transfers but embodied and recontextualized transformations.

Within the framework of the case studies discussed throughout this paper, due to the strong influence of local filters and recontextualizations, the essential adaptive rewriting strategies are those of appropriations as defined by Sanders. However, since the sources are still openly signaled and used as the defining hypotext, the rewriting process aligns well with Hutcheon’s idea of adaptation as the “extensive transposition of a particular work,” where the source remains recognizable in the final version, which becomes an appropriative adaptation (Hutcheon 7). I tend to use the umbrella term “adaptation” where necessary throughout this paper because these reworked Turkish stage pieces still acknowledge and allow reading a recognizable Shakespearean script, although the language, setting, politics, and genre might be subject to radical directorial and dramaturgical interventions. Considering the risks associated with the fluidity and complexities of terminology in adaptation studies, the plays analyzed in this study are (appropriative) adaptations due to the degree of transformation their rewriting strategies undergo.

The existing Turkish scholarship has also tactfully laid out a distinctive framework for treating adaptation, metatheatricality, and recanonization on the Turkish stage. In her PhD thesis, Eylem Ejder develops the concept of recycling dramaturgies to explain how “contemporary Turkish theater is characterized by a thematic, structural, and aesthetic recycling tendency,” where three interconnected nodes—nostalgia, metatheatre, and utopia—address gaps in the past, present, and future (Ejder 225). Her focus on “theatre as rehearsal” as the primary driver of metatheatrical effects offers an argumentative opportunity for the plays examined in this study (Ejder 146). Melis Günekan analyzes political Shakespeare adaptations in Türkiye through a close examination of five productions that view adaptation as a collaborative, locality-driven negotiation of Shakespeare’s authorial sovereignty, Westernization/locality, and identity politics. The plays in her portfolio are processed through “local filters” and incorporate traditional practices, local political dilemmas, and crises (Günekan 166). Drawing on the concept of retranslation as value creation, Başak Ergil conceptualizes “translational recanonization,” which is “the act of reintroducing a text or a cultural artifact into another national or transnational cultural canon” (Ergil, “Song Translation as Creative Mediation” 214). Although Ergil’s work provides a translation-studies perspective that emphasizes the logistics of translating to show how texts move across different canons to generate value, she argues that Turkish theater could develop its “own voice” by reworking or recanonizing canonical texts through humorization (“‘Humourizing’ the Theatre” 88). Furthermore, Deniz Başar demonstrates how traditional Turkish theatrical practices are embedded in modern productions, revealing nine patterns of recycling in Karagöz and other conventional forms. Her study is a groundbreaking resource that highlights how traditional forms are revived in Turkish theater, playing a key role in the deep exploration of Karagöz’s heritage in modern adaptations (Başar 17). This interconnected line of scholarly work provided a precious backbone for the development of my conceptual matrix to explicate the essential traits of tradition-induced stage adaptations on Turkish stages.

Building on and extending the conceptual framework initiated by recycling dramaturgies (Ejder), locality-authority negotiation (Günekan), Repertoire: The embodied, repeatableKaragöz-based metatheatrical patterns and recycling paradigms (Başar), translational recanonization (Ergil), I propose a new concept, the Adaptive Stage Matrix (ASM) to illustrate how canonical works (such as Shakespeare in this study) are reimagined in performance through several interrelated nodes of operation that not only reshape scripts, transfer texts, or describe heritage, but also show how these journeys of transformation emerge as operative stage devices to generate rupture, catharsis, and affective audience engagement. Within the scope of this study, it is a relational system through which canonical works are rewritten after being processed by Turkish idioms (meddah, ortaoyunu, and Karagöz), staging devices, and audience reception. The ASM triangle model (Figure 1) illustrates the dynamics of the adaptive process, where recycling devices are in a synergistic interplay with each other. The operative engine of this framework is comprised of three parts:

Metatheatricality: Creates estrangement, clarity, and offers a self-reflective structure.
Recanonization: Foreign canon is reborn as part of the Turkish cultural canon.
Repertoire: The embodied, repeatable practices; defined through Diana Taylor’s work in Archive and Repertoire.

Metatheatricality is a vital aspect of the adaptive process demonstrated in the ASM. As we will explore in detail in later sections of this article, the selected plays share features such as direct audience address, elements from the repertoire of traditional theatrical forms (meddah, ortaoyunu, and Karagöz) with meta devices, intertextual and sociopolitical parody, and rehearsal as part of the show. These elements ultimately culminate in audience engagement and reflective moments, which are key strategic components of metatheatricality, primarily constructed through local filters.

Recanonization is another aspect of our model. Although it adopts a more argumentative approach than the one focused on here, the scholarly use of the term “recanonization” dates to the late twentieth century in feminist perspectives, which revise or reshape the previous patriarchal canon, as seen in Naomi Schor’s article (Schor). The term’s popularity also spread to translation studies, where a work’s canonical status can be “recanonized” when it is reinterpreted within the linguistic framework of another culture (Ning 71). However, recanonization, as emphasized in the ASM, extends beyond the metrics and localized alterations involved in transferring a borrowed source into the target culture. Instead, it becomes the culmination of systematic stage techniques that transform the borrowed canonical source into something considered “ours,” which is the repertoire of Ottoman forms, through traditional stage filters, dramaturgical twists, and recoding the canon with cultural references that resonate with local audiences. Within the limits of this article, I want to briefly summarize the repertoire that is referred to here throughout the piece, which are the three urban comedic forms: meddah (1), Karagöz (2), and ortaoyunu (3).

Meddah (1) is a solo storyteller from the Ottoman era and is one of the oldest and most significant traditional theatrical forms in Turkish performing arts. It is recognized by UNESCO as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Meddah differs from other traditional practices (Karagöz and ortaoyunu) in its diverse narrative devices and language tools, which have a significant impact on audience engagement. It is based on continuous, suspense-building storytelling, driven by retarding and rapid changes of voice and tempo, resulting in powerful audience immersion. His language is the epitome of the heteroglossic mix of dialects, accents, and manners grounded in the Ottoman Empire. His verbal skills, deployed in quick, vernacular wit, prove effective even in non-performative occasions. While Karagöz and ortaoyunu develop a presentational spectral impact with certain aesthetic distance and relatively smoother audience responses, meddah’s more immersive practices spur identification and empathy among spectators. A meddah speaks with impressive mastery and fluency; he effectively impersonates the characteristics and tone of the people he mimics with realistic accuracy (Nutku 55).

Although traditionally rooted in narrative storytelling, the dynamic structure of meddahs blurs the boundaries between drama and narration. They interweave dialogue, mimicry, character embodiment, and role-playing, often using shifts in voice modulation and body language (And, Kısa 35). Meddahs typically have two props on stage: a handkerchief draped around their neck and a stick held in their hands. The props not only make the performers recognizable, but they also play an active role in narrating their stories. One of the earliest meddahs of his time, La’lin Kaba, who performed meddah shows in the palace of Sultan Murat III, is depicted in a miniature that clearly displays these props (Akçam 113).

Like meddah, Karagöz (2) is a UNESCO-recognized cultural heritage of humanity that retains the legacy of improvisation, sharp political satire, and comedic conversations that blend vernacular humor, music, and social commentary. Artists use tanned leather to craft puppet figures. Following a meticulous process, the leather is washed, treated with fermented bran, “painted in vegetable dye,” and cut into the necessary shapes (Kudret, Karagöz 48). Every detail is important because the puppet comes to life on the white curtain when they are backlit and manipulated by a hayali (puppeteer). Karagöz performances involve direct address and interaction with the audience, designed to entertain and engage the crowds; these elements were inherited from the meddah tradition (Gerçek, Temaşa 82). The main stock characters in the show are Karagöz and Hacivat. Karagöz represents the witty, uneducated everyman, while Hacivat symbolizes the pseudo-intellectual and poser who sounds educated and articulate. He always prioritizes his personal interests; as a result, he accepts the status quo and refrains from criticizing or opposing it, going with the flow (Kudret, Karagöz 28). Hacivat styles himself with ornate titles while acting as an MC to open the performance, trigger the plot, and mediate interactions.^[2] The performance revolves around the rising and falling tensions, misunderstandings, and humorous dialogues between these binary figures, involving satire, ridicule, and entertainment. Karagöz has undergone significant changes in repertoire since Ottoman times, as its function, tone, and audience have all evolved. Absurdity and grotesqueness, two of the tradition’s defining tenets, were abandoned after the proclamation of the Republic, as “Karagöz was gradually tamed and fixed in terms of the performance,” leading to its being “re-formed as a children’s play,” which remains its most recognizable form (Babadoğan IV, 361, 59). Especially in the late 19th and 20th centuries, its obscenity and vulgarity, including concealed scrutiny, prompted debates over whether to completely abandon or reform them (Efe IX). Hence, the ideologically engineered reform has softened Karagöz’s Ottoman essence; the entire setup and delivery of the performance have been elevated to a national heritage aimed at family-friendly entertainment, which counterintuitively made the form the most practiced one amongst the three Ottoman forms in focus here.

Ortaoyunu (3) is an improvisation-driven comedy show performed in a circular open space by a group of stock characters, blending satire and slapstick parody to engage directly with the audience. The cast of comic characters is led by the comic duo Kavuklu, a naive, foolish, and talkative character known for his absurd misunderstandings and marked by a white, quilted turban; and his wise counterpart, Pişekar, an articulate mediator who introduces the plays and drives the story by resolving conflicts while counterbalancing Kavuklu’s foolish jokes. Based on these features, this traditional form is widely referred to as a “Turkish commedia dell’arte” (Gerçek, Türk 18) with two major distinctions: it does not feature masks, and female roles are performed by male actors, unlike the Italian practice. The interaction of two contrasting characters, utilizing laughter, parody, and satire through playful jokes and social commentary, is akin to the Karagöz shadow play. According to some European sources, there is a strong influence from Byzantine and Latin mimus plays on Commedia dell’arte, ortaoyunu and Karagöz (Kudret, Karagöz 37).

The performances always featured a storyline that performers agreed upon, and there was a repertoire-driven improvisation. The structure is presentational and non-illusionistic, so the audience is always reminded that it is a play and should not be mistaken for reality (Kudret, Ortaoyunu 85, 87).^[3] The performance area is a circular space surrounded by the audience (And, Kısa 56–9). This middle (Turk: orta) space could be all the meadows, squares, and courtyards of the city which serve as its performance area (Kudret, Ortaoyunu 87). Like Karagöz, ortaoyunu relies on humor stemming from deception, misdirection, surprise, and distortion, as well as extensive use of wordplay—puns, name games, and verbal wit (And, Kavuklu 15). Due to the verisimilitude of stock characters and open, modular dramatic structure, it is often regarded as Karagöz transposed from “the screen to the ground” (Gerçek, Türk Temaşası 105). The parts of the shows also share a similar pattern.

These traditions^[4] are not only a vital part of Türkiye’s intangible cultural heritage but also inspire contemporary productions that aim to blend modern and traditional elements, universal themes with local nuances, and textual accuracy with performative immediacy. However, among these traditions, only Karagöz is still being practiced, but it has lost much of its foundational tenets and has largely transformed into a children’s theatre and a propaganda device. In that vein, Shakespeare’s plays have become a remarkably dynamic arena for Turkish theatre professionals, lending them a vast perspective and opportunity for local interpretations. The model I propose, ASM, bridges the gaps between the reinterpretations of traditional theatrical forms and today’s sociopolitical urgencies, allowing them to coexist in the current performance. This culminates in building a repertoire where familiar, audience-friendly forms reappear in different performances to foster emotional engagement. Reimagining Shakespeare’s plays through familiar idioms, forms, and practices fosters emotional engagement, increased accessibility, and trust among audiences. The recanonized works are kept alive on stage through repeatable, recognizable dynamics of repertoire.

Today, a wide range of urgent societal issues, ranging from patriarchy and gender discrimination to censorship, forced displacement, and freedom of speech, are effectively reframed through Bard’s works within theatrical structures exuding traditional forms that resonate with audiences. This diverse theatrical landscape provides a rich foundation for innovative productions to emerge and help reshape the adaptive canon in Türkiye. The study examines how these productions blend traditional forms within their dramaturgies, merging textual canonicity with conventional practices to create compelling hybrid dramaturgies. Through the Ottoman repertoire Shakespeare’s narrative legacy continues to be reimagined through these culturally embedded performative strategies. The respective plays in the case studies throughout this study will be analyzed using the operative mechanism of the ASM.

CASE STUDY 1: Satirical Hybridities of Transposing the Tragic through Comic Traditions in Bir Baba Hamlet

Bir Baba Hamlet (A Father Hamlet)^[5] is the Turkish reinterpretation of German playwright Sebastian Seidel’s Hamlet for You (2016). The play is produced by Istanbul-based Baba Sahne, which was founded by Turkish comedian Şevket Çoruh in 2015. Seidel’s already comedic reimagining of Shakespeare’s tragedy takes on a culturally adapted form in Türkiye, incorporating elements that resonate with the three major Turkish theatrical traditions of meddah, ortaoyunu, and Karagöz. The two-hander has featured different actor pairings, while Çoruh remains fixed in his role. Previously, the actors Murat Akkoyunlu and Günay Karacaoğlu paired him in separate performances. The production discussed in this study features the famous comedy TV series star İlker Ayrık. Notably, Çoruh is the most recent bearer of the symbolically important kavuk, a quilted turban that symbolizes a historical theatrical legacy passed down through generations of ortaoyunu performers (see Başar 201-10). Başar notes that kavuk ritual “grows from the non-institutional branch of left-leaning theatre recycl[ing] methods of Karagöz […] to create their own counter-invented traditions and counter-canons” (Başar 16). It represents folk wisdom, the voice of the people, comic relief, and moral integrity (Durmaz 25, 42). Thus, Çoruh’s Bir Baba Hamlet emerges from this tradition of satire, ridicule, and parody, offering entertainment and engagement that resonates with the traditional repertoire. It is also important to note that the play’s significant local success might have encouraged the previous holder of the kavuk, Rasim Öztekin, to pass it on to Çoruh in 2020.

**Fig. 2.** Production photo from Bir Baba Hamlet (2025). Courtesy of Baba Sahne

The play opens with close echoes of the prologue and muhavere (banter/dialogue) parts, which are embedded in both Karagöz and ortaoyunu. The comic duo is attired in peasant-like garments, paired with simple trousers and shoes, which initially radiate a folkloric aesthetic. Çoruh wears a hanging cross around his neck and holds a skull in his hand, situating the play within its cultural context. The play begins with Ayrık’s awkward and premature leap onto the stage before the curtain rises, as if he is uncertain about what to do next. He mistakes the show for a musical and insists on starting with singing before Çoruh interrupts him, reminding him that what they are going to perform is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, and greets the audience: “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our play” (Eren). This playful start establishes an ortaoyunu landscape where two stock characters engage with the audience through humorous bickering, role-playing, parody, and mundane jokes. Çoruh then provides the background for Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and they act out the first scene of the original script. He plays the role of the sentinels, while Ayrık portrays the ghost, who enters the stage on a hoverboard and glides across, mimicking the movements of a ghost (Fig. 2).

The play embodies powerful political satire and commentary as an integral part of its adaptive strategy, shaped by traditional theatrical forms that are replete with social and political critique. There is a large repertoire of jokes covering a wide range of topics like economic turmoil caused by high inflation rates, unemployment, unpopular infrastructure projects, censorship, and more. In the scenes in which Çoruh incarnates Claudius’s crowning and the public address, he hilariously impersonates Turkish political figures, altering his tone of voice, body language, and rhetoric. When newly crowned King Claudius negotiates reforms and projects in the country with Gertrude (Ayrık), he also mentions a new tax regime to collect money, the construction of new shopping malls, and residences. He introduces “paid chivalry,” a humorous allusion to the Turkish military service exemption for a fee, highlighting the covert criticism of the disparity between those who can afford it and those who cannot. After these comments, Ayrık warns Çoruh about the potential political consequences of his remarks, and Çoruh then reminds the audience that everything said on stage is based nowhere else but in Denmark. Shifting the focus to the safety of the original Shakespearean Denmark setting for the local critique allows for avoiding direct censorship and adopts a tone consistent with “plausible deniability.”

Bir Baba Hamlet is unique in its endeavor to blend a vast range of Turkish theatrical traditions while reinterpreting the Shakespearean narrative in contemporary Türkiye. This blending can take place smoothly because “[t]hese three Ottoman non-religious and urban performance forms [meddah, ortaoyunu, Karagöz] were like branches of the same tree, since they limitlessly shared plots, jokes, performers, and audiences” (Başar 1). Within the context of Ottoman İstanbul, this intertwined format led many Karagöz puppeteers to also act as meddah or perform ortaoyunu, with other repertoire elements coexisting in the same shows (And, Kısa 34). In this regard, the play powerfully encompasses all three major traditional theatrical forms. However, the play primarily radiates an ortaoyunu landscape. It should be noted that, embodying the traditional ortaoyunu theatrical form, Çoruh aligns more closely with Pişekar, the refined, knowledgeable, and composed figure. At the same time, Ayrık evokes Kavuklu, the impulsive, quick-witted, yet ignorant comic everyman. The impact of the ortaoyunu is further showcased using microphone stands on either side of the stage, where actors frequently come to sing songs, make improvisations, and interact with the audience. This aspect of the show is also reminiscent of tuluat, a 19th-century Ottoman theatrical form that emerged in Istanbul. It is closely linked to ortaoyunu in its use of similar elements, but unlike it, it is shifted onto the proscenium stage and borrows plots from French comedies. Başar cites Tietze’s notes on a popular 19th-century Ottoman puppeteer, which makes it clear that there are musical recitals called kanto before shadow puppetry shows (Başar 67). Given the explicit structural common ground between these traditional forms, the full integration of live songs throughout the play suggests that the play also adopts these traditional motifs. Ayrık’s transformations between different roles reflect his humorous take on the otherwise tragic characters. Particularly in the scenes where he plays Gertrude and Ophelia, he wears red and yellow wigs for each role (Fig. 3). He uses exaggerated language and gestures to enhance the audience’s comedic experience. The deep philosophical and dramatic moments of the original script, such as Hamlet’s famous existential soliloquy and Ophelia’s tirade after her father’s death, are transformed into a Turkish lament using folkloric instruments, including the saz and ney. The solemn, tragic, and dark elements are reinterpreted in a way that invokes traditional idioms and cultural codes, replicating the original gloom through a local register.

**Fig. 3.** Production photo from *Bir Baba Hamlet* (2025). Courtesy of Baba Sahne

Audience interaction is a key feature of the adaptation, present in almost every scene throughout the performance. Just before the first half ends, the audience becomes an integral part of the performance. Çoruh instructs them to chant “murderer, murderer” whenever the snake that killed Claudius is mentioned, and “treacherous bitch, treacherous bitch” at the mention of Gertrude. Although clearly intended as satire and light humor in essence, the scene might be read as perpetuating misogynistic vocabulary and aligning with broader patterns of patriarchal insult culture that foregrounds violence against women, a critical sociopolitical issue in Türkiye. However, this observation pertains to the potential impact of the language rather than the creative team’s intentions. Similar (machismo) call-and-response practices are used throughout the play, for example, when Hamlet is called, the actor asks the audience to say, “A father Hamlet, hey Allah, slaughter the king, hey Allah,” a reinterpreted form of a well-known Turkish rhythmic chant sung as a nonsensical joke in street celebrations, sports events, and other festive gatherings. The communal, participatory spirit was also reflected in traditional meddah performances, which were primarily performed in coffeehouses for entertainment. These call-and-response moments ensure greater engagement and shared ownership in the storytelling process of the canonical text, despite not being critical of the misogynistic common ground that this temporary audience community is built on.

Additionally, in one brief scene, the upper left section of the foldable panels on the wooden platform, which covers almost the entire upstage area, pulls apart to reveal a backlit space for a Karagöz performance. In this space, Çoruh takes on the role of puppeteer. The curtain features puppets of Claudius and Laertes, who are conspiring to kill Hamlet, reflecting key themes from the original script. The fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes, along with the ensuing tragic consequences, creates some of the most dramatic and entertaining scenes in the play. During the duel, the music shifts absurdly from Queen’s 1977 song “We Will Rock You” to mehter marşı^[6] (the Ottoman military march), resulting in an imaginative convergence of narratives, temporalities, and cross-cultural reinterpretation. The final scene of the production maintains its impact on the audience when Çoruh solemnly approaches the microphone stand once again and says, “We probably made Shakespeare turn in his grave.” He then sings a lament rewritten from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 66, translated by Can Yücel, who is known for his localized, folkloric interpretations rich in Turkish idioms and the cadence of folk poetry. Murat Öğütçü explores how translations of Sonnet 66 in Türkiye “become a cross-textual source through intermedial song adaptations” (Öğütçü 68). The use of traditional instruments adds emotional weight to the lament, creating an unforgettable moment.

Since its premiere in 2017, Bir Baba Hamlet has consistently been performed in packed halls with strong audience reception. The play’s main success is based primarily on Çoruh’s public image and Baba Sahne’s organizational agility in maintaining its media and marketing presence. I believe, however, that its central charm lies in the profound incorporation of recognizably local heritage, blending traditional Ottoman forms such as ortaoyunu, meddah, and Karagöz conventions into an accessible contemporary Shakespeare remake.

**CASE STUDY 2: Cultural Transference in Venedikli Tacir through Karagöz Aesthetics**^[7]

Venedikli Tacir is one of the rarest productions that brings together Shakespeare’s legacy and a deeply rooted theatrical form of the Karagöz shadow theatre universe. It is another notable^[8] play that adapts Shakespeare to the Karagöz curtain following Ayhan Hülagü’s Dream of Hamlet (2021), produced by the Karagöz Theatre Company in the United States. Hülagü’s play featured at least 35 puppets manipulated by a single puppeteer who, “himself, is part of the play as a character,” adding a layer of metatheatricality to the traditional Karagöz form in a pioneering effort to blend Western and Eastern canons on the ancient Karagöz form (Haliloğlu 37). The adapter Murat Karahüseyinoğlu’s^[9] Venedikli Tacir, on the other hand, reimagines Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (c. 1596-1597) by setting it in Ottoman Istanbul, rather than Venice. He introduces characters unique to the Karagöz tradition, with Karagöz taking on the role of the original script’s peripheral character, Lancelot Gobbo (Fig. 4). It should be noted that the traditional Karagöz repertoire includes adaptations of major tragic love stories, such as Tahir and Zühre and Ferhat and Şirin, in similar means too, where Karagöz becomes a middleman of the plotline (Kudret, Karagöz 431). Therefore, reimagining Karagöz within a Shakespearean context is grounded in the Ottoman tradition of the form. In this new interpretation, Karagöz becomes the protagonist, as he was in Tahir and Zühre and Ferhat and Şirin in the 19^th century. He is also depicted as working for Portia, running errands, and helping her, thus filling in for Nerissa as well. Major lines from Portia in the famous trial scene were also given to Karagöz. His quick-witted energy, explosive jokes, and satirical critiques, alongside political commentary, transform the Shakespearean narrative into a vibrant theatrical experience for the audience.

**Fig. 4.** Production photo from *Venedikli Tacir* (2025), showing Antonio (left), Shylock (middle), and Karagöz (right). Courtesy of Öteki Tiyatro & Hayali Tasvir. For the animation of the puppets by puppeteers behind the shadow curtain, see here

The play addresses contemporary global and local issues through the satirical and critical lens typical of the Karagöz tradition. This twenty-first-century Karagöz is concerned with climate crises, globalization, and consumerist society. Karagöz’s relationship with his wife mimics traditional bickering. When she learns about the process of Portia’s husband selection from Karagöz, his wife reacts sternly, saying, “Shame on the father who treats his daughter like a piece of property.” Karagöz responds, “Let’s stop right there! This issue will still matter 500 years from now” (Karahüseyinoğlu). While these lines highlight the script’s sharp commentary on enduring gender norms, demonstrating the relevance of Karagöz plays in today’s renditions, this reframing also introduces problematic dimensions in the progress of its dramaturgy. In the famous trial scene leading up to the denouement, Karagöz dresses up as a law officer to resolve the conflict, replacing Portia’s role in the source text and portraying her as a passive onlooker, which strips her of agency. Indeed, this dramaturgical twist reproduces the very patriarchy it purports to critique above while also aggravating the already problematic gender roles in the original script.

**Fig. 5.** Production photo from *Venedikli Tacir* (2025), showing the casket scene with (left to right) Hacivat, the Moroccan Prince, Portia, and Karagöz. Courtesy of Öteki Tiyatro & Hayali Tasvir. For the animation of the puppets by puppeteers behind the shadow curtain, see here

Venedikli Tacir loosely follows the Shakespearean plotline with cuts and reductions from the original script. Despite relatively brief appearances at the beginning and end, the play also features Hacivat, the all-time partner of Karagöz, who serves as the translator to the Moroccan prince in the play. The dramaturgical setup makes Hacivat significantly less visible and removes his traditional role as the MC who opens the show by calling in Karagöz and asking him to do something that he is obviously not qualified to do. However, this production weakens the conventions and turns the play into Karagöz’s sole playground from start to finish. In the typical Karagöz-Hacivat bickering, the pseudo-intellectual, upward-aspiring urbanite Hacivat and the raw, emotional yet all-smart,^[10] street-wise Karagöz engage in a conversation related to Portia’s potential candidates (Fig. 5). The Moroccan prince is depicted as a foreigner who obtained Ottoman citizenship through property and land investment, reflecting the controversial current laws that permit foreigners to gain citizenship similarly in Türkiye. However, Karagöz’s mockery of the dark skin of the Moroccan prince and the rhetoric surrounding Shylock’s ethnic background sometimes risks slipping into an exclusionary or biased register, which might reveal sociopolitical vulnerabilities and stimulate sensitivities related to current issues like immigration debates in Türkiye and the unresolved human rights crisis in Palestine. The deforestation for the sake of urbanization in Istanbul, along with controversial mega projects that are thought to threaten the natural balance, and the influx of refugees into urban areas due to corrupted political bargains are some of the targets parodied by Karagöz. Although Karagöz’s attacks are indirect and remain at the level of allusion, the scene showing Portia’s concern that his remarks will plunge them all into trouble adds another layer of comedy to the already sharply humor-packed ambiance where the Shakespearean world amalgamates with Karagöz’s irreverent wit and outstanding improvisational vitality.

The integration of two Beberuhis into the show adds a multi-layered dramaturgy in the adaptive delivery. Beberuhi is considered the fool of the neighborhood; “a foul-mouthed, lewd dwarf” (Töre 66). He is one of the most common stock characters in the Karagöz tradition, embodying “grotesque and metaphysical” characteristics (Özek 214). The simultaneous portrayal of two Beberuhis, one as a goodwill angel and the other as an evil figure feels like an iconographic echo of the late Medieval and Renaissance morality plays’ angel-devil dichotomy, while also alluding to the Biblical or Quranic dual angel imagery. This argument is further strengthened by the visual representation of the characters, each highlighted by bright flashlights from behind, creating an aesthetic that resembles celestial or spiritual illumination, a technique that allows them to exit the white curtain and continue their fight on the walls and ceiling of the blackbox theatre. In this context, the play alters the traditional portrayal of Beberuhis as foolish, instead assigning them a reimagined role as metaphysical manipulators, amplified by the fact that they can exit the screen. The play offers a new spectral alternative that surpasses the confines of the conventional shadow screen, challenging its boundaries and scope.

Karahüseyinoğlu’s Karagöz not only flourishes within the Shakespearean narrative with his traditional image but also displays a contemporary essence, updating the usual stock character of the traditional repertoire. He states in an interview that he is opposed to the accustomed image of an ignorant Karagöz (Algan 2024). Karagöz’s traditionally acknowledged image of a crudely rough citizen deprived of formal education, which prevents him from establishing a consistent work and social life, is significantly modified in this rendition. When Shylock needs an official body to endorse the terms of the contract with Antonio, Karagöz appears disguised as a qadı, the Ottoman judicial officer responsible for administering Islamic law to resolve civil and criminal cases. They often exercised discretion in interpreting customary and written laws. His reimagined Karagöz defies conventions and becomes a quick-witted resolution-bringer in the play as he borrows Portia’s lines from the source script. Karagöz’s role as an Ottoman qadı, tasked with resolving the Shakespearean conflict in a Turkish setting and serving as the protagonist in this hybrid landscape, highlights the inventive adaptive strategies employed throughout the production.^[11] The celebratory scene after Antonio wins Portia’s hand features church bells blending with Islamic calls to prayer in Istanbul, highlighting the city’s multicultural landscape that becomes a melting pot for Western and Eastern theatrical traditions. Hence, the final celebration scene, which dismisses Shylock through a Muslim-Christian unity, adds another layer to the play’s politically and dramaturgically problematic elements.

The depth of Karahüseyinoğlu’s adaptive capacity has already proven itself in his Godot Bize Gelmez^[12] (Godot Won’t Come to Us), a Beckett-Karagöz convergence. His cross-cultural theatrical endeavor brings together Turkish shadow theatre and Western scripts, demonstrating that these two forms can work in tandem to generate innovative adaptations. He states that Karagöz’s flexible narrative and improvisational structure can respond to various canonical texts, such as Shakespeare, and adapt their distinctive forms to local culture (Algan). This is what happens in Venedikli Tacir, which inventively interprets Shakespeare’s enduring themes, characters, and narratives through Karagöz’s playful flexibility.^[13] Karahüseyinoğlu recanonizes Shakespeare as his Karagöz invites a unique dialogue between then and now, between the local and the global, and between the traditional Ottoman repertoire and the canonical authority.

Endnotes

^[1] Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Turkish are the author’s own.

^[2] There are different speculations on how the Turks adopted shadow play practices. Some historical records indicate that shadow theatre practices were performed in ancient India, China, and Java during the fourth century AD, and later brought to today’s mainland Turkey through the Mongol Turks (Sevengil 73). Some researchers that trace the origins of shadow play to Southeast Asia argue that it might have been transported by nomadic groups like Romani people (gypsies). Since Karagöz is repeatedly labeled as çingene (gypsy) in the corpus, the argument that gypsy communities might have played a role in spreading the tradition has some basis (Kudret, Karagöz 27). However, due to the confusion between historical references to shadow play and other forms of puppetry that complicate tracing the origins of the Karagöz form, Metin And notes that shadow puppetry in particular most probably traveled to Anatolia from Egypt in the 16th century (And, Türk Tiyatro Tarihi 31). Cevdet Kudret also explicitly discusses Anatolian shadow play as connected to Asian traditions and its Egyptian conduit. Regarding the origins of Karagöz and its possible entry into Anatolia, Kudret cites Egyptian historian İbn İyas and notes that after invading Egypt in 1571, Selim I enjoyed a shadow play he watched in Giza and expressed his desire to bring the Egyptian puppeteer to Istanbul for his son’s entertainment, adding further that two figures from a 16th-century Egyptian shadow play resembled Karagöz and Hacivat (Kudret, Karagöz 14). Later in the seventeenth century this shadow play was named after its main character, Karagöz, and began to take its mature shape (And, Kısa 43-4). Andreas Tietze also adheres to the Egypt route and refrains from speculation, even though he summarizes various other theories.

^[3] The historical records of specific references to ortaoyunu date its definitive form to the second half of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century, though it is not precisely known when it started (Kudret, ortaoyunu 1). It is deeply rooted and culturally ingrained in the Ottoman celebrations and festivals. The actors performed for both royal and public entertainment. Comedy shows comparable to ortaoyunu were reportedly held during the festivities for the birth of Mustafa III’s daughter in 1759, with performances organized in front of the shops. Imitations of political figures were also performed during these demonstrations.

^[4] In addition to these forms, there are older practices such as puppetry (marionette) and rural performances enacted by folk villagers. Taking their cues from shamanistic practices predating the Islamization of the region, Anatolian Village Plays often focus on natural events such as midwinter, animal births, the awakening or dormancy of plant life, and animal mating. (And, Dionisos 7).

^[5] This analysis is based on the live performance I saw at Caddebostan Kültür Merkezi, Istanbul, Türkiye on 11 March 2025. Produced by Baba Sahne. Script: Sebastian Seidel. Directed by Emrah Eren. Assistant Director: Işıl Zeynep. Translated by Yücel Erten. Scenic design by Barış Dinçel. Lighting design: Yakup Çartık. Music: Can Şengün. Composer: Faruk Üstün. Choreography: Deniz Özmen. Actors: Şevket Çoruh, İlker Ayrık.

^[6] Mehter is a military band that plays marches, especially during military attacks, as it boosts the morale of the army and establishes psychological superiority over the enemy. A modern version of one of the mehter songs can be accessed here (Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri).

^[7] This analysis is based on the live performance I saw at Moda Sahnesi, Istanbul, Türkiye on 24 Oct. 2024. Produced by: Öteki Tiyatro & Hayali Tasvir. Adapted by Murat Karahüseyinoğlu. Puppeteer: Mehmet Ali Dönmez. Assistant: Cansu Tekoluk. Assistant: Elifnaz Alpman. Assistant: Nilay Çalamak.

^[8] One can also trace a workshop production of a Karagöz adaptation of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex in Türkiye performed by puppeteer M. Emin Taşdemir at Istanbul University in 2019 (İÜ Tiyatro eleştirmenliği ve Dramaturji).

^[9] Karahüseyinoğlu is a pioneering Turkish director and playwright known for his stage adaptations of classic plays on the Turkish stage. Before this production, he adapted Godot Bize Gelmez in 2022 (Godot Won’t Come to Us), a reworking of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot for the Karagöz screen. He also reimagined Ionesco’s Rhinoceros as a Karagöz shadow play, but it remains unproduced.

^[10] In the traditional Ottoman Karagöz show, Karagöz is portrayed as a perpetually unemployed, lazy, and bawdy anti-hero. Yet, the character has transitioned into an everyman in the Republican practices of heritage making and sanitization to fit national popular cultural policy. Karahüseyinoğlu’s experimentation with Karagöz, however, confronts both the Ottoman and Republican images of the character, assigning him the smartest of all characters.

^[11] This aligns with ortaoyunu plot structures that assign fake qadı roles to ordinary people to bring quick-witted resolutions to disputes involving non-Muslim Ottoman communities. See Olcaytu and Ümit’s introduction and ortaoyunu piece titled Zorlu Kadı (En: The Stern Qadi) in Ressam Muazzez’den Ortaoyunları: Külliyata Girmeyen Oyunlar (Olcaytu and Ümit 30, 72).

^[12] A full version of the play by Öteki Tiyatro can be accessed here. The play was first performed in 2022 and Karahüseyinoğlu received the Best National Playwright Award from Üstün Akmen Theatre Awards.

^[13] I interviewed him in the summer of 2025, which provided an opportunity to observe the flexibility and innovative dramaturgical perspectives on the evolution of his Karagöz. Even hearing a single aspect of this adaptive framework is likely to surprise those who favor either Ottoman or Republican images of Karagöz: “We should see Karagöz not just as a traditional character, but as any other performer. Both Karagöz and Hacivat can and should take on any role; they should perform like any other actor (Karahüseyinoğlu, personal communication, 4 July 2025).

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*Burak Urucu is an EFL instructor at the School of Foreign Languages at Istanbul University-Cerrahpaşa, Türkiye. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in English Language and Literature, with a focus on contemporary British theatre. His research concentrates on contemporary British drama, Shakespeare in performance, and particularly Turkish stage reinterpretations of canonical works, focusing on how they are shaped and influenced by local traditional idioms and theatrical practices. He is a member of the Turkish Shakespeares Project, which aims to promote Shakespeare’s visibility by mapping and reviewing the Bard’s Turkish afterlives and supporting scholarly research.