| Yilmaz Onay | |
| Birth Date: | 20 April 1937 |
| Birth Place: | Gaziantep, Turkey |
| Occupation: | Playwright theatre director translator novelist |
| Genre: | Non-Aristotelian drama Epic theatre Dialectical theatre |
Yılmaz Onay (20 April 1937 – 9 January 2018) was a Turkish author, theatre director and translator.[1]
He translated plays, which most of them are known plays of Bertolt Brecht, stories, novels, books of poems and non-fiction books from German to Turkish and write plays and novels; all published. As a director, he staged most of Brecht's works, in a theatre called Epic Theatre[2] which he was one of the frontiers of this theatre movement in Turkey.Onay's first accomplishment as director was, staging a known play Fear and Misery of the Third Reich written by Brecht.
Yılmaz Onay was born in 1937 in Gaziantep. In 1960 he finished his study as a structural engineer at the Istanbul Technical University (İTÜ.) While studying, he was also part of the theatre group called ITÜ theatre. In 1961 he received grants from The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to participate in a research program at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, in Germany, which he had the opportunity to form a theatre group consisted of young actors from Germany, Turkey and Egypt, as well as an American soldier. He produced his first piece, The Rulers, the work of Eugène Ionesco, within the scope of the ‘’Duisburger Society Ensemble.’’ A year later, Onay was back to Ankara where he worked with the Cinema and Theatre Association, and the ‘’Ankara Experimental Stage’’, until 1972.
He was awarded with International Peace Party 2nd prize in Istanbul, in 1965, for the work, War Game, which he staged and produced. The piece was adapted from a radio play, Such a Piece, written by Sermet Çagan.
In 1966, Onay shared the "Grand Prix of the Festival Mondial du Theatre de Nancy" with a Brazilian theater troop, for the piece Long Creek, which was adapted from Yaşar Kemal’s novel, Yer Demir, Gök Bakır (Iron Earth, Copper Sky) by Nihat Asyalı.[3]
He took a role in a play, Reading Passage, directed by Max Meinecke. This play was staged at the Goethe Institut in Ankara.The first play he directed, in Ankara Art Theatre (AST,) was Fear and Misery of The Third Empire of Bertolt Brecht, in 1972. In 1973, he was invited by the ITI, (German Centre of the International Theatre Institute,) as a guest student to participate on the urban stages of the city of Essen and Berlin. In 1974, he helped start a new theatre called The Contemporary Stage, in Ankara, where he, from 1975 to 1978, produced and directed plays, adapted from Nazım Hikmet’s Yusuf and Menofis, Nihat Asyalı's Strike, and Gladkov's The Cement. Later in 1984, he directed a play, adapted from a novel by Hans Fallada, called Little Man, What Now?, and a self-written cabaret These Price Raises Are Up Against Me. From 1985 to 1989 he produced and directed his own pieces abroad, Those Who Were Left in Araf and Mystery of Karagöz in Amsterdam, The Death of An Artist in Paris, a play about peace for children, Our Songs Must Not Die, in the Hebbel Theater, Berlin. While in Berlin, he staged and directed a play of Dario Fo, Non Si Paga! Non Si Paga! (We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!) in 1991. Onay, in the same year, moved to Istanbul, and in 1993 he was appointed as stage director at the Istanbul National Theatre, where he produced and directed numerous plays, including his own. Onay retired from his post in 2002. In 2006, one of his works, The death of an Artist was adapted for a television play by TRT. His other stage plays were performed in Turkey and in different countries several times. In addition, he has published in different newspapers and magazines numerous articles and has taken part in many panel discussions. On 14 April 2008 it was celebrated Yılmaz Onay 50 years in art.