Metin Zakoğlu

A radio house in Eyüp, then the City Theatres exam

Zakoğlu was born in Istanbul in 1971, in Eyüp, and grew up across the water in Suadiye — the neighbourhood he would eventually turn into an auditorium. He was the youngest of six children in a household where performing was already a trade: his father, Kadir Kubilay Zakoğlu, worked as a radio artist; his mother, Sevim, kept the home.

The formal route opened in 1994, when he passed the entrance examination for the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality City Theatres and joined the company. He remained there until 2001. In the same year he was admitted he also set up a private company of his own and began writing for TRT, producing and performing sketches for the live Istanbul Radio programme Tatil Sabahı. The shape of the next three decades was already there: an institutional wage on one side, a self-made outlet on the other, and a habit of writing his own material rather than waiting to be cast.

The flat, the café, and a business built on twenty seats

Evde Tiyatro — home theatre — dates from 2002, the year after he left the municipal company. The premise has not moved much since: a domestic room, a single performer, and an audience small enough to be counted at the door. The Suadiye space is a garden-floor flat in a seafront building and takes twenty guests per performance. Arrivals are received in the manner of a neighbour calling round rather than a public being seated, and the absence of a raised stage is the point rather than a limitation.

In 2008 he added a second format, Cafe Theatre, a room in which food and drink are served but where full plays are performed rather than musical cabaret turns. Both concepts are still trading. Evde Tiyatro and Cafe Theatre now operate in Suadiye and Kartal on the Anatolian side of Istanbul and in Bodrum, which gives the operation a summer coast season alongside the city winter. The Koşuyolu room, at Barbaros, Bekir Sıtkı Sezgin Sokak No 168 in Üsküdar, carries most of the current Istanbul repertoire.

The economics are unusual for Turkish theatre and follow directly from the room size. With twenty to thirty seats there is no volume to sell, so the ticket carries the show: Evde Tiyatro dates listed for October 2026 start at ₺700, Cafe Theatre dates at ₺600, and a touring date in Bursa at ₺500. Against that, a decade-old promotion for the same venue advertised seats at ₺25.90 in early 2017, which is a fair measure of how far both the lira and the format have travelled.

A repertoire he mostly wrote himself

Zakoğlu is credited as the author of five plays — Arkadaşım Kadın Oldu, Herkes mi Aldatır?, Kansız Nigar, Tinder Çarpsın and Yoksa Oyuna mı Geldik? — and he usually directs and performs them as well. Herkes Mi Aldatır?, first staged in 2010, was adapted for the screen and brought him a best actor nomination; the stage version ran until 2018. He has also published a book, Bana Bir Yalan Söyle.

The wider list is a working repertory rather than a series of productions. Anlat Anlat Rahat Et, which he wrote and directed, dates from 2016. Bir Selfiye Ne Dersin? followed in 2017, written by Murat İpek and directed by Engin Gürmen, a ninety-minute two-hander played with Ayşe Kökçü. Hayrola Karyola arrived in 2024 with Zakoğlu acting and directing. Alongside these sit titles that have been in and out of the diary for years — Komik Gazino, Edepsiz Komedi, Raporlu Çatlak, Zuerbamya Cumhuriyeti, Tinder Çarpması, a stand-up set under his own name, and a version of Yaşar Ne Yaşar Ne Yaşamaz on which he is credited as actor, dramaturg and director.

Away from the stage he has appeared in television productions and films and in commercials for Pamukbank, Anadolu Bank and Siemens. The screen work funds the rooms rather than the other way round.

Gogol, performed with the lights on

The piece that best explains the method is Bir Delinin Hatıra Defteri, his solo adaptation of Gogol's Diary of a Madman. It runs ninety minutes, is rated 14 and over, and strips out almost everything a stage normally provides. The billing is blunt about it: no lighting, no set, no music, no curtain — an audience and one actor.

What replaces the machinery is casting from the room. Zakoğlu recruits people sitting in front of him into the story, handing out the parts of the clerk's superior, of Sofya, of the maid, so that the question of who is deranged and who is merely watching is never cleanly settled. The tone moves between comedy and something closer to distress. Reception is not unanimous: the production carries a 5.8 out of 10 user rating from twenty-six votes on the Turkish listings site tiyatrolar.com.tr, which is a reasonable reflection of a format that some audiences find intrusive rather than intimate.

2026: awards, caravans, and theatre delivered to the door

Zakoğlu received a theatre labour and achievement award in 2010 and was named performer of the year in 2025. The recognition has arrived alongside a further extension of the same idea. His current project, Sahne Senin Evin — the stage is your home — inverts Evde Tiyatro: instead of the audience coming to his flat, he goes to theirs, performing on Mondays, Tuesdays and Saturdays, with bookings taken by telephone rather than through a ticketing platform. The material is built around storytelling and direct contact rather than a fixed text.

The summer of 2026 took him out of the city. On 21 July he played Neşeli Gazino at the Cuppa caravan camp site in Akbük Cove, Muğla, as the headline guest of a caravan theatre week that also featured an improvisation show by Özgür Engin on 18 July and a play called Terminal on 25 July, all starting at 21:30. On 25 July he was also billed at the Taksim İstiklal stage in Istanbul.

The autumn diary

The current run is dense and spread across three rooms. At Cafe Theatre on the Anatolian side, Raporlu Çatlak plays Sundays at 20:30 on 13, 20 and 27 September; Yaşar Ne Yaşar Ne Yaşamaz takes the Friday and Sunday early slots on 18, 20, 25 and 27 September; and Bir Delinin Hatıra Defteri plays Saturday afternoons at 16:00 on 19 and 26 September, with a further date on 7 October, some performances moving to All Saints Moda Church. On 25 September he is in Bursa at Kafa Sahne at 20:30.

At the Suadiye flat, three different titles occupy three consecutive slots at the start of October: Ağzı Çiçekli Adam on 1 October, Edepsiz Komedi on 2 October and Lüküs Hayat Kabare on 4 October, all at twenty seats and from ₺700. Rotating a different play into the same living room on successive nights is the oldest habit in the operation, and it is still the thing that distinguishes it from a comedy residency.