Culture industry and theater precariat

The culture industry, which was put forward by the thinkers of the Frankfurt School in the first half of the 1900s, has had an impact on the theater as well as on the arts, as in everything else. Theater is faced with the danger of commodification with the effect of the culture industry's taking the theatre hold of popular culture and the efforts of theaters to attract more audiences as a result of the encompassing effect of capitalism. Specific to art, theater has always been a field that governments / authorities want to keep under control and use in line with their own ideologies. In this context, those in the administration has aimed to reach these demands with some restrictions and on the contrary, support and incentives. The financial support provided in some measure to the theaters by the state has been insufficient for theater and theater actors to solve their financial problems. Therefore, theater actors cannot benefit from social rights such as fair wages, social security (although this right is recognized within the scope of article 4 -b- of the social security law, theater actors generally cannot earn the fee to pay their insurance premiums), and safe working. Since they do not have the right to fair wages, the existence of other social rights also falls into trouble. In this study, the effects of the culture industry on theater audiences, and therefore on the theater, through popular culture, and the financial problems faced by theater actors, whichis in direct contact with the state support on private theaters, the existence of their social rights and their status of benefit from these rights have been examined. In addition, in the study, the precarity of the actors, including the laborers working in most business fields with the effect of today's economic policies, and the precariat processes separated from the proletariat with the effect of the type of special labor in the production processes have been examined. In this context, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 24 theater actors working in private theaters in Istanbul who participated in the study on a voluntary basis, using semi-structured interview questions. The research was conducted adhered to qualitative research techniques. In the interviews, data have been obtained related towhat the theatre actors think about the state's view of the theater and the state's culture and art policies, how they make their play choices, and their thoughts on how they are perceived in society with their audience profiles, as well as their opinions aboutwhat the impacts of the TV series-cinema sector and popular culture on the theater are. In addition to these, information has been obtained about the thoughts of the theater actors aboutoccupational organizations, their job finding, their recruitment processes, their income and financial situation, and also their thoughts on theater management have been determined. During the interviews, the problems faced by the actors in their work and social lives have also been determined. The data obtained from the interviews have been analyzed using the Nvivo10 program. The findings have been interpreted in the context of the state's art policies, the concept of precariat and the culture industry.