Başar Sabuncu

Başar Sabuncu — Biography

Born Fuat Başar Sabuncu on September 9, 1943, in Istanbul, he became a playwright, director and translator. After Saint Joseph French High School he studied at Ankara's Faculty of Political Science and then French language and literature at Istanbul University, leaving before finishing for financial reasons. His first play, Kargalar, written while still a student, was staged by the State Theatre in 1962; his 1969 play Şerefiye was named the year's best domestic play. Between 1964 and 1969 he worked in the theatre section of TRT's Ankara radio, adapting classics such as the Iliad and Don Quixote for radio drama.

After the 1971 military memorandum he spent time in France, then joined Istanbul City Theatres as a director in 1974 at Muhsin Ertuğrul's invitation. Dismissed after the 1980 coup, he lived for a time in Germany, staged one of his own plays at Berlin's Schaubühne, and in 1984 was tried before a military court over an intellectuals' petition opposing the coup. His best-known work is Kaldırım Serçesi, regarded as a landmark of Turkish musical theatre; he returned to City Theatres in 1988 and went on to direct more than thirty productions there.

From the mid-1980s he turned increasingly to cinema, directing films adapted from his own screenplays such as Çıplak Vatandaş, Zengin Mutfağı and Kaçamak, and was honored with retrospectives in London, Paris and Montpellier. He left City Theatres in 2004 and died in Istanbul on June 17, 2015.