Fatih Koyunoğlu

Bahçelievler first, conservatory second

Koyunoğlu was born in Istanbul in 1979 and came to the stage before he came to formal training. His first credited work was in 1998, in Çanakkale Geçilmez Destanı at the Bahçelievler municipal theatre — the municipal circuit rather than a drama school being the door he walked through. He then entered the theatre department of Istanbul University's State Conservatory, graduating in 2005.

By his second year at the conservatory he was already working at the Bakırköy municipal theatres, and in an interview published on 5 February 2026 he traced his working habits back to that overlap: older actors who came in early the morning after a night of touring, and whose discipline set the terms for everyone younger in the building. He describes the lesson as a plain one about how much respect a piece of work is owed.

Between 2003 and 2007 he appeared at Bakırköy in a run of repertory productions, among them İkinci Caddenin Mahkumu, Teneke and Sezuan'ın İyi İnsanı — Simon, Kemal and Brecht inside four years, which is the kind of range a municipal company gives an actor in his twenties and almost nothing else does.

Directing, and the prizes that followed

The work after Bakırköy moved in two directions at once. As an actor he was recognised with a best supporting actor prize in 2008 for Albay Kuş and again in 2018 for İntiharın Genel Provası. As a director he staged Bölge Hastanesi in 2012 and 5. Frank in 2014, acting in both; the latter brought him a directing nomination in 2015. In 2023 Aşk Hikayen Düşmüş earned him a special jury prize from Yeni Tiyatro Dergisi.

Since then the output has settled into a near-annual rhythm inside Tiyatro Hayali, the company whose name sits on everything he currently tours: Aşk Hikayen Düşmüş in 2022, Meçhul Paşa and the children's piece Hayalbaz Kaşifler in 2023, Mercaniye Çok Yaşa in 2024, Şebbaz in 2025 and Düş Payı in 2026. All six remain listed as live productions rather than closed ones, which is unusual and explains why four of them can be on sale in the same month.

The constants are a small group of collaborators. Ahmet Sami Özbudak has written Şebbaz, Meçhul Paşa and Düş Payı; Emrah Eren has directed all three; Erdem Akakçe shares the stage with Koyunoğlu in two of them. Speaking in February 2026, Koyunoğlu put the company's method bluntly — they like digging about in the stories of this soil — and described a rehearsal process that went through several versions of the text without anyone's ego attached to a draft.

The screen work alongside it

Television arrived in 2004 with Kalp Gözü and became steady: Şeytan Ayrıntıda Gizlidir, Geniş Zamanlar, Dağlar Delisi, Aşk Kapıyı Çalınca, then Zafer in Yeter from 2015. Two longer runs did most to make the face recognisable — Akif in İstanbullu Gelin from 2017 to 2019, and Nuh in Doğduğun Ev Kaderindir from 2019 to 2021.

The film credits are sparser and span two decades: 2 Süper Film Birden in 2005, Plajda in 2008, Zaman Makinesi 1973 in 2014 and Yaşamak Güzel Şey in 2017. The pattern across the whole CV is of an actor whose screen profile funds and fills a theatre schedule rather than replacing it; the serial work stops and starts, the Tiyatro Hayali repertoire does not.

Şebbaz, and a prize in September

Şebbaz, which opened in the 2025 season, is the production that has defined his standing this year. Özbudak's text puts two childhood friends, Turna and Mehmet, through a Karagöz apprenticeship under the same master and then into trouble: they perform a shadow play at the circumcision ceremony of a powerful man's grandson, the performance says too much, and the two become fugitives across Istanbul, hunted to protect a reputation. Koyunoğlu plays Turna, the more conservative and more childlike of the pair, a part written close to the Karagöz archetype itself.

Reviewing the production on 20 November 2025, Tüveyç Demir in Sanatokur called it a modern shadow play and read the two friends' drifting apart as a figure for Turkey's interrupted modernisation. The notice singled out Koyunoğlu's quick-wittedness and naturalness onstage, arguing that his performance bridges classical comic playing and contemporary narration, against Akakçe's more secular, withdrawn Mehmet. Barış Dinçel's set and costumes, Yakup Çartık's lighting and Deniz Bayrak's music were credited with holding the archaic and the present-day in the same frame.

On 22 September 2026, at the 27th HDI Sigorta Sadri Alışık Theatre and Cinema Actor Awards at the Atatürk Cultural Centre, Koyunoğlu won best male actor in the comedy, musical play and musical category for Şebbaz. The ceremony, hosted by Yekta Kopan with a performance from Zuhal Olcay, honoured the 2025–26 season and opened with tributes to artists who had died during it, among them Haldun Dormen, Kadir İnanır, Zihni Göktay, Gülsen Tuncer and Serhat Kılıç.

Düş Payı: the newest opening

Ten days after the award, on 2 October 2026, Tiyatro Hayali premiered Düş Payı. Özbudak again writes and Eren again directs, but the cast is larger — Murat Akkoyunlu, Özge Özberk and Barış Yıldız alongside Koyunoğlu — and the subject is literary rather than folkloric. The play invents a meeting between Sait Faik Abasıyanık and Orhan Kemal: Sait Faik is under treatment at the Marmara Clinic when a knock comes at the door, and Orhan Kemal is on the other side of it with the draft of a new film he has pinned his hopes on and wants signed off.

What follows is a night that runs from the clinic garden out to Burgazada, with the two writers sharing the same dream in one scene and tearing into each other's world in the next. The production is billed at 120 minutes across two acts, rated 12 and over, with music by Tolga Çebi and set and lighting by Kerem Çetinel. It is a change of design team from Şebbaz, and a change of register: less shadow-play apparatus, more argument.

Where the work is playing

The touring picture in October and November 2026 is a company schedule rather than a single tour. Meçhul Paşa — Özbudak and Eren's piece on the humour paper Markopaşa, launched in 1946 by Sabahattin Ali, Aziz Nesin and Rıfat Ilgaz with the cartoonist Mim Uykusuz, in which Koyunoğlu appears with Akakçe and Bülent Çolak — is the most widely booked, with dates at Sefaköy Kültür ve Sanat Merkezi on 16 October, Kadıköy Eğitim Sahnesi on 18 October, BAOB Sahne in Bursa on 20 October, TED Sahne in Sakarya on 22 October, Kozzy's Gönül Ülkü Gazanfer Özcan stage on 30 October, the MEB Şura Salonu in Ankara on 2 November, Marmara Koleji in Kocaeli on 11 November, Sahne Dragos on 13 November and Bor Kültür Merkezi in Niğde on 16 January 2027.

Şebbaz is selling across both sides of Istanbul plus Bursa, İzmir and Aydın, with seats from roughly 658 to 1,206 lira depending on house and date. Düş Payı has Istanbul and Ankara dates listed, including 17 October in Istanbul and 1 November at the MEB Şura Salonu, from about 767 lira. Aşk Hikayen Düşmüş continues on the Anatolian side and in Sakarya from 600 lira, and Hayalbaz Kaşifler plays Ankara on 1 November from 500 lira. Meçhul Paşa tickets run from 600 to 1,600 lira. Nothing in the listings is a long sit-down run; the model is one or two nights a venue, repeated across a dozen cities.