Baraka Theater’s new play Shakespeare’in Şen Kadınları (Shakespeare’s Merry Women) has been staged at various venues in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
Performed by Feray Karahüseyin Ergin, Merin Olgun, Muhammed Said Alpsoy, Serap Kızıl and Şifa Alçıcıoğlu, the play is a feminist retelling of several plays of Shakespeare and is written by Nazen Şansal. The play collates the points of views of several female characters from William Shakespeare’s plays, such as from Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Taming of the Shrew and the fool character from various plays.
Shakespeare’in Şen Kadınları interrogates the intersections of patriarchal and capitalist exploitation. Defining their play as a “purple” comedy, the play glocalizes Shakespeare’s play to the contemporary concerns of people from the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
We wish the company good luck with their endeavours.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Murat Öğütcü received his PhD degree with his dissertation entitled “Shakespeare’s Satirical Representation of the Elizabethan Court and the Nobility in His English History Plays” from the Department of English Language and Literature at Hacettepe University, Turkey, in 2016. From August 2012 to January 2013, he was a visiting scholar at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was the Head of the Department of Western Languages and Literatures at Munzur University, Turkey, between 2016 and 2021. He is currently working at Adıyaman University, Turkey. He is the General Editor of the “Turkish Shakespeares” Project that aims to introduce texts, productions and research on Turkish Shakespeares to a broader international audience of students, teachers, and researchers. He is among the regional editors of the Global Shakespeares Project and the World Shakespeare Bibliography. Along with MEMOs Events Editor, Aisha Hussain, he is co-Editor of the MEMOs edited collection, Materializing the East in Early Modern English Drama, forthcoming from Arden Studies in Early Modern Drama (2023). He has written book chapters and articles on his research interests that include early modern studies, Shakespeare, and cultural studies. His recent essays include “Materializing Mamluks and Turks in Salterne’s Tomumbeius” (Arden, 2023), “Contemporary Turkish Shakespeares: New Breath to Old Lives” (Arden, 2023), “Elizabethan Audience Gaze at History Plays: Liminal Time and Space in Shakespeare’s Richard II” (Routledge, 2022), “İkinci Katil [The Second Murderer]: A Turkish Adaptation of Shakespeare’s Scottish Play, Macbeth” (English Studies, 2021), “Of Pistols and Pikes: Weapons of War in Shakespeare’s Henry V” (PU Blaise Pascal, 2021), “Teaching Shakespeare Digitally: The Turkish Experience” (Research in Drama Education, 2020), “Masculine Dreams: Henry V and the Jacobean Politics of Court Performance” (Cambridge UP, 2019), “Julius Caesar: Tyrannicide Made Unpopular” (Parergon, 2017), and “Shakespeare in Animation” (Hacettepe, 2014).
View all posts by muratogutcu
Turkish Shakespeares 