Nilgün Belgün

From a Şişli classroom to the Devekuşu stage

Nilgün Belgün was born in Istanbul on 18 March 1953. She went through Özel Şişli High School and then the Istanbul Municipal Conservatory, graduating from its drama and voice programme in 1973. Before any of that turned into a salary she was already working cabaret rooms in Izmir and Istanbul with her then-husband Abdullah Şahin.

Her professional debut proper came in 1974, in Haneler at the Devekuşu Kabare Tiyatrosu — the company built around Metin Akpınar and Zeki Alasya, with Ahmet Gülhan, Ayşen Gruda and Oya Başar also on its roster. She stayed three years. The grammar of that house — short sketches, songs, an actor talking straight out at the room rather than through a fourth wall — is still the grammar of the show she tours now, half a century later.

After Devekuşu she moved through most of the significant private companies of the period: the Haldun Dormen Theatre from 1987 to 1993, then Ali Poyrazoğlu Theatre, Levent Kırca Theatre and Tiyatro İstanbul.

Gülpembe, and the decade television took

Mass recognition arrived in 1990, and it arrived through a sketch rather than a stage. Her Gülpembe in the Darbukatör Bayram segment of the programme Bir Başka Gece became one of the most quoted comic characters of the period, and in 1993 she took the Milliyet newspaper award for television comedy actress of the year.

The stage work did not stop while that was happening. She played Yedi Kocalı Hürmüz across the 1999–2000 season, and her performance in Tepetaklak at Tiyatro İstanbul in 2006 brought both a comedy actress of the year prize and an Altın Lale fine arts award for best theatre actress. She has also presented programmes on Star TV and TV8, and lent her name to public-health campaigning — awareness work for Turkey's menopause and osteoporosis society, and later Parkinson's disease campaigns.

Three books, then one of them on stage

Belgün writes as well as performs. İçimdeki Kadın appeared in 2003, Aşk ve Komedi in 2010 and Hayat... Sen Benimsin in 2012; she also co-wrote Bir Kadın Bir Erkek with Cengiz Özakıncı. Serkan Budak adapted and directed the first two into a single stage autobiography, Nilgün Belgün'le Aşk ve Komedi, which she has been performing since November 2012.

Speaking to the press in February 2015, she described it as a life play running from the 1950s to the 2000s: one woman's account of herself that doubles as an account of how the country around her changed. In the same conversation she put the audience problem facing Turkish theatre down to schooling and habit rather than taste, argued that children should be taken to theatres early, and said state support for theatres and actors had thinned compared with what it once was. She was blunt about the hierarchy she works in too, calling the stage the real arena for acting and pointing out how many television performers come out of it.

The production carries a full design team rather than a bare stage: set by Nilgün Gürkan, costumes by Canan Yaka, lighting by Murat Selçuk and music by Ari Aliciyan, with Mehmet İris partnering the dance passages.

Screen work kept running underneath

Across the same decades she has worked steadily on film and television without the stage credits ever drying up. Series include Yabancı Damat in 2004, Yalancı Yarim in 2006, the long-running Akasya Durağı from 2008 through 2011, and Jet Sosyete across 2018 and 2019.

On film she goes back to Bıçkın in 1988, through Bana Şans Dile in 2001, Çinliler Geliyor in 2006, Yağmurdan Sonra in 2008 and Düğüm Salonu in 2018. The most recent run is commercial comedy: Kutsal Damacana 4 in 2023, İngiliz Anahtarı: Recep Usta in 2024 and Kutsal Damacana 5: Zombi in 2025.

2024 to 2026: a trio show, then back to one

Her most visible recent project was not solo. Kaynat Bakalım opened on 8 March 2024 at Maximum UNIQ in Sarıyer, a ninety-minute single act for Nükhet Duru, Belgün and Saba Tümer, directed by Uğur Babürhan with music by Serpil Günseli, lyrics by Yılmaz Erdoğan, costumes by Sadık Kızılağaç and movement by Yiğit Dündar. Rated 18+, it worked the same seam as her solo piece — flirtation, marriage, infidelity, told as the performers' own anecdotes with a live band behind them.

On 20 September 2026 she confirmed that show had wound up, blaming three diaries rather than any friction between the women involved, and said she was in preparation for a new solo piece titled Hayat Sen Benimsin. In the same interview she put her one-person show into its fourteenth season and noted a change in how she now plays it: alone on stage, where the earlier version had dancers with her.

Elsewhere in 2026 she took the Habertürk programme Hayatın İçinden on 8 August, and on 9 October was at Teşvikiye Mosque for the funeral of Necla Uygur, widow of Nejat Uygur and mother of Süheyl and Behzat Uygur, saying she had known and been fond of her for years. Her last listed prize is the jury special award at the 2022 Yeni Tiyatro Dergisi work and success awards.

The autumn run

Eight dates are currently on sale through Biletix, and they are a touring pattern rather than a residency: 17 October at the Bostanlı Suat Taşer Tiyatrosu in İzmir, 19 October at Beylikdüzü's Atatürk Kültür ve Sanat Merkezi, 2 November at Mezitli Kültür Merkezi in Mersin, 3 November at 01 Burda PGM Sahne in Adana, 7 November at BAOB Sahne in Bursa, 19 November at DasDas in Istanbul, 27 November at the Karadeniz Teknik Üniversitesi hall in Trabzon and 29 November at Atakum Belediyesi's Ata Sahne in Samsun. Prices run from about ₺1,000 for İzmir to roughly ₺1,650 for DasDas and Samsun.

Other sellers carry additional nights around those: 15 October at Paribu Vadi's open-air stage in Istanbul, 13 November at Ted Sahne in Sakarya and 24 November at Ve Sahne Panora in Ankara, with start times mostly 20:00 or 20:30. Most dates are promoted by Epizot, which does not take returns or exchanges except where a performance is cancelled outright.