Arts & Theatre · Theatre
Emre Karayel
3 dates on sale
On tour
Every date the ticketer lists, worldwide · venue time
The profile · researched 26 October 2026
Seventy-five minutes, one actor, and the question he has been asking since 2018
Emre Karayel is a Bilkent-trained stage actor whom most of Turkey knows from eight seasons of television comedy. This autumn he is back in regional culture centres with the solo play that has now outlasted almost all of his screen work.
Kadirli, Ankara, and a change of faculty
Karayel was born on 18 October 1972 in Kadirli, a district of Osmaniye in southern Turkey. He finished school at Ankara Atatürk Anatolian High School and enrolled at Gazi University to read economics in its school of economics and administrative sciences — a course he left before finishing. The transfer that decided his career took him to Bilkent University's School of Music and Performing Arts, into the theatre department, from which he graduated in 1999.
The first job after graduation was not acting but presenting: he joined the state broadcaster TRT, where he prepared and fronted children's programmes. That split between performer and presenter has never fully closed, and it explains a good deal about the direct-address comic register he works in on stage now.
His professional acting debut came in 2000 with the TRT series Ablam Böyle İstedi, followed by Kuzenlerim in 2002. Recognition arrived with the 2003 series Bir İstanbul Masalı, in which he played Zekeriya.
Eight seasons as Ozan
Through the middle of the decade Karayel worked steadily in Turkish drama, appearing in Gümüş, Kurtlar Vadisi Pusu and Canım Ailem. The part that fixed his face in the national memory was Ozan Karaman in the two-hander romantic comedy 1 Kadın 1 Erkek, which he played across eight seasons and several sequel formats between 2008 and 2015, opposite Demet Evgar.
The cinema work ran alongside it. He made his film debut in 2006 in Onur Ünlü's Polis, then appeared in Zincirbozan in 2007, Usta in 2008 and Başka Dilde Aşk in 2009. From 2016 he added game-show hosting to the mix, fronting Sıradaki Gelsin in 2017 and then the Turkish Wheel of Fortune format Çarkıfelek from 2018 to 2020.
Away from performing he has been a principal member of the Jockey Club of Turkey since 2020 and races horses under his own name; one of them, Yiğit Kardeş, took a race on 16 October 2022 worth ₺1.7 million.
Othello, Pompeius and an Afife
The stage credits are the part of the CV that television audiences tend not to see, and they are not light. Karayel's first listed professional theatre work was Ghetto for Ankara State Theatre in 2000, directed by Erhan Gökgücü, followed by Azizname in 2001 under Yücel Erten. He then moved into the orbit of Oyun Atölyesi, the Istanbul company where most of his classical work sits.
For Oyun Atölyesi he took the title role in Othello in 2004, directed by Kemal Aydoğan, and played the Executioner in Jeanne d'Arc'ın Öteki Ölümü in 2005. In 2008 he appeared as Fistach in Testosteron, the role that brought him his only major stage award: at the 13th Afife Theatre Awards in 2009 he was named most successful male actor of the year in a musical or comedy in a supporting role. In 2012 he played Pompeius in Antonius ile Kleopatra, and in 2016 he appeared in El crèdit, directed by İskender Altın.
Three companies account for the whole of that record — Ankara State Theatre, Oyun Atölyesi and, from 2018, Tatbikat Sahnesi, the Ankara house founded by Erdal Beşikçioğlu.
How Oksimoron got made
The show now touring began at Tatbikat Sahnesi in 2018. Erkek Aklı Oksimoron is a Turkish staging of Robert Dubac's 1997 solo play The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?, translated by Özge Kayakutlu and adapted by Zeki Enes Akkan, with Beşikçioğlu directing and Karayel alone on stage as Semih. It opened in Ankara with performances on 10 and 11 April and 27 and 28 April 2018, and runs one act of 75 minutes with a 14-and-over guidance.
Speaking a few days before the opening, Karayel said the piece lands hardest when couples watch it together, because that is when the joke acquires its full flavour, and that a comedy of this kind only reaches its finished shape after twenty or thirty performances, since the audience effectively finishes the writing. Eight years of touring later, that process has had plenty of time to run.
An early review in May 2018 gives a useful measure of what the show does and does not do. The reviewer praised Karayel's playing — roughly eighty minutes carried alone, as a man whose girlfriend Burcu has just left him, soliciting advice from the auditorium — and liked a set built around small props and surprise changes, while noting that nobody was credited for the design. The criticism was aimed squarely at the last half hour, which the reviewer found didactic and repetitive, with broad generalisations about men and women displacing the sharper material, and an ending that settled for conventional relationship counsel.
Where he stands in autumn 2026
Karayel's most recent sustained television role was Tolga Okaner in Bahar, the Show TV drama led by Demet Evgar that ran for three seasons and 64 episodes from 13 February 2024 to 28 December 2025 — a reunion with the co-star of 1 Kadın 1 Erkek two decades on.
The newer development is behind the scenes. On 6 October 2026 the Turkish press reported the Istanbul premiere, at UNIQ Box, of Komşum Viyol Ailesi, a children's show built from puppets, animation and live music that Karayel produced with his wife Gizem Karayel and on which he is credited as supervisor. He used the occasion to talk mainly about her: that she suited the stage, that she had been brave in taking on work outside her field, and that she had pushed her violin playing to an advanced level. The couple, who married in 2020 and have one child, then appeared together on CNBC-e's arts programme art-e on 12 October 2026 to discuss the production.
Against that, the solo play remains his steady live work. It is the title his name is attached to on the ticketing platforms this autumn, and it is selling across regional halls rather than a single Istanbul residency.
The dates on sale
The current itinerary is a touring circuit of municipal and school culture centres. Biletix lists performances on 1 November 2026 at TED Sakarya Koleji Konferans Salonu in Sakarya, 14 November at BAOB Sahne in Bursa, 22 November at İstinyeArt Performans Arena in İzmir, 29 November at Çorlu Ünal Baysan Kültür Merkezi in Tekirdağ and 15 December at Türkan Şoray Kültür Merkezi in Antalya.
Three dates run consecutively in December on Bubilet, all starting at 20:30: Fethiye Belediyesi Kültür Merkezi in Muğla on 14 December, the Antalya date on 15 December and Isparta Belediyesi Kültür Merkezi Gül Salonu on 16 December. Tickets across the run start between ₺700 and ₺1,000 depending on the city, with the Isparta seats listed at ₺1,370, and some venues carrying a buy-two-get-one-free offer.
Aggregated audience scores are warm rather than unanimous: 4.5 out of 5 from 516 reviews on Biletinial, where 376 are five-star and the recurring compliment is Karayel's handling of multiple character voices, against 6.8 out of 10 from 312 ratings on tiyatrolar.com.tr.
The show, now
The show on the road this autumn is Erkek Aklı Oksimoron, and it is Karayel alone: one act, 75 minutes, no interval, 14-and-over guidance, with nothing billed before it and no second performer on the cast list. He plays Semih, a man whose girlfriend Burcu has just walked out, and works the material as part monologue and part stand-up, switching between several characters in his own head and putting questions directly to the auditorium, which answers back — reviewers from the original 2018 run describe an interactive room laughing through most of the evening. The staging is modest and built on small props with a few surprise changes rather than any scenic spectacle, which is what lets it drop into school auditoriums and municipal culture centres unaltered: TED Sakarya Koleji in Sakarya on 1 November 2026, BAOB Sahne in Bursa on 14 November, İstinyeArt Performans Arena in İzmir on 22 November, Çorlu Ünal Baysan Kültür Merkezi in Tekirdağ on 29 November, then three consecutive 20:30 starts in Fethiye on 14 December, Antalya on 15 December and Isparta on 16 December. Tickets start at ₺700 to ₺1,000 in most cities and ₺1,370 in Isparta. Audience scoring is good without being uniform — 4.5 out of 5 from 516 reviews on Biletinial, 6.8 out of 10 from 312 on tiyatrolar.com.tr — and the praise clusters on his vocal switching between characters, while the standing criticism, raised in a review of the original Ankara run in May 2018, is that the last half hour turns didactic and the ending settles for ordinary advice about couples.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · tiyatronline.com · haberturk.com · tiyatrogunlugu.com · tiyatrolar.com.tr · biletinial.com · biletix.com · bubilet.com.tr
Pictures
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons, credited
This photo is available from Serkan Yakın and https://www.sekoloji.com/detay/. T · CC BY 3.0
