The Republican Turkish theatre criticism

Theater is an art which aims to reach to the audience. Theatre criticism has functions like developing and making easier to reach the audience and documenting a presantation forever. Theatre criticism has been existence since the beginning of Republican Turkish Theater. This paper aims to create a historical perspective of theater critism from 1923 to present and to examine the development of theater criticism, to identify problems especially after 2000 and to generate new fields of study and discussion. For this purpose firstly, newspapers, magazines, articles and academic dissertations were searched and general characteristics of theater criticism, between 1923 – 2000, examined by the social and political environments. Then secondly, theater criticism after the year 2000 was evaluated in relations with new media, the reader, theater practitioners and the Western theater. This second section completely created from personal interviews. This personal interviews done with the leading names of after 2000 Turkish Theater: Ayşegül Yüksel, Barış Erdenk, Dikmen Gürün, Gürol Tonbul, Hakan Gerek, Hasibe Kalkan, Hülya Nutku, Murat Demirbaş, Mustafa Demirkanlı, Özdemir Nutku, Seçkin Selvi, Seval Deniz Karahaliloğlu, Üstün Akmen, Yaşam Kaya and Yeşim Özsoy. To realizing this interviews took one and half year and common questions were asked in all interviews. One of the main objectives of this study is to contribute to the revival of theater criticism. The beginning of the Republican Period Turkish theater criticism, has passed with the efforts for establishing itself. In the 1950s it has accepted that theater criticism has unique features. In line with movements in the theater environment in the 1960s, theater criticism had it peaks, too. In the second half of the 1970s theater criticism has stagnated. With the September 12 Military coup, censorship and self-censorship issues began, it has become difficult to reach readers. After the 1980s, theater criticism has somekind of vacillated period. At the present time, it began to be dicussed that theater criticism might have subjective and creative features and it's important that the internet has created new platforms to publish critics. It can be said that theater criticism, nowadays, has a new period.