The documentary about the performance process of staging King Lear as Kraliçe Lear (2019) not only shows how Shakespeare’s plays can be domesticised but also how they can be democratised. Being an all-female and rural travelling theatre, the performance of the Arslanköy Theatre Company gives new insight to what extend Shakespeare might be considered universal. The backstories of both the rural performers and the rural audiences prior and following the recorded performance of Shakespeare’s play create a retrospective vision on both the performance and the lives of these performers.
Through Pelin Esmer’s vivid portrayal, the backstories of Behiye Yanık, Cennet Güneş, Fatma Fatih, Ümmü Kurt and Zeynep Fatih open new ways of signification on the immediacy of Shakespeare for the lives of the rural perfomers and the audiences, a perspective which has not been quite seen by urban practitioners and audiences. More info on IMDb. We strongly recommend you to watch the documentary!
How to cite:
Öğütcü, Murat. “Kraliçe Lear (2019): Rural Women’s Take on King Lear.” 2021.
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).
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Turkish Shakespeares 
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