Connected counter publics: Women's movement and feminist theatre

Throughout this study, feminist theatre movement is examined, which was formed simultaneously with the 2nd Wave Feminism, previously in USA and Europe in 70's later in Turkey in 80's, 90's till 2010's "The feminist counter space", the term coined by Nancy Fraser is used as a descriptive term for this kind of public space. The feminist movement and the feminist theatre movement are described as "counter publics". The main question is: what kind of public sphere was formed by feminism and feminist theatre and how they spoke with the bigger bourgeoisie public sphere in the mentioned period? And do they have a potential to change the public sphere? At the same time, it is observed that feminist movement and feminist theatre speak with each other, too. And via this dialogue, they blossom. Hannah Arendt's conceptualization of freedom & politics is inspiring in terms of definition of the public space formed by women. After telling the story of the 2nd Wave in Turkey, the theatre of Feminist Women's Circle, the group which is also an organic component of the feminist movement in Turkey, is analyzed in detail, while giving a panorama of the feminist theatre in Turkey with other women groups. And finally two plays by Sevilay Saral -the writer and one of the founders of the Feminist Women's Circle- are examined in detail. "7 Women" and "A Woman is Awakening" are plays created and staged in a special form called "theatre of women"; both plays are produced just by women and staged just for women. In the last part of the thesis, the potential of these plays for creating "a counter public" is analyzed. Throughout this story, Western feminism & theatre, Turkish feminist movement and performance are described as "connected feminist counter spaces". Keywords: woman, women, feminism, theatre, counter-public, FKÇ, Sevilay, Saral, women's movement.