(Re)considering Turkish Theatre in the Republic’s Centenary
Shakespeare and Intertextuality in Turkish Theatre
Intertextuality was revealed in the 1960s by Julia Kristeva and has been extensively used in postmodern texts. Techniques such as quotation, allusion, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche, parody etc. are used to make connections between the source and target texts. In the postmodern period, it is not possible any longer to speak of the originality or the uniqueness of the artistic object, because every artistic object is so clearly assembled from bits and pieces of already existent art. It is the period that is characterized by irony, the scepticism towards the grand narratives of modernism, and philosophical critiques of the concepts of universal truths and objective reality that is seen in novels, short stories and dramas. As in the world also in Turkish Theatre postdramatic examples are on the stage. It is ironic that although textuality is one of the biggest challenges of Turkish theatre after the Tanzimat period and its journey continues with it now it has to experience a wide range of postdramatic features. Furthermore, Shakespeare is one of the well-known figures whose plays are used as source texts among these postdramatic approaches in Türkiye. In this study, it is aimed to give a general idea about Shakespeare studies in Türkiye from the Tanzimat period and focus on studies of today and evaluate the plays that make connection with Shakespeare through intertextuality. In this sense, the plays of Müjdat Gezen’s Hamlet Efendi, Başar Sabuncu’s Bir Ata Krallığım, Serhat Yiğit’s II. Katil, Müge Gürman’s Cadıların Machbeth’i, Pınar Akkuzu and Gülden Arsal’s Şatonun Altında are going to be discussed with the way of using intertextuality to have polyphonic narrative entities with the voice of ‘the other’ of the literary canon and to find out a ground on which issues of gender, identity, race, nature etc. are dealt with.