Özge Günay Göze

From a state theatre to a company of two

Özge Günay Göze trained as an actor at Süleyman Demirel University, graduating from the drama department of its Faculty of Fine Arts, where she met Burçhan Göze, the writer, composer and director who would become her stage partner and husband. According to the company's own account, the pair spent a year in the children's theatre wing of Tiyatro Kare before moving into the Turkish State Theatres system as salaried actors.

That state-theatre period is where the idea for a company of their own took shape. Burçhan Göze had won playwriting prizes in 2012, including the Feraizcizade Mehmet Şakir competition and the Chamber of Architects' award for young-audience plays, and he wrote and directed Sahte Gerçekler at Sivas State Theatre. In 2015 the two of them left to set up Altı Üstü Kabare in Istanbul, positioning it explicitly as a continuation of the cabaret tradition that Devekuşu Kabare had introduced to Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s.

The founding statement on the company's site is short and unadorned: laughter is a kind of medicine that heals wounds, and comedy built on close observation of ordinary life can lead an audience to think harder rather than less. That is the brief Günay Göze has been working to for a decade.

Parkkolikler and the first years

The debut production, Parkkolikler, opened in 2015 and is the show that introduced the company to Istanbul audiences. It is a set of scenes that all take place in public parks at different times, and Günay Göze both performed in it and choreographed it. It remains in the repertory today, listed as an active production on the tiyatrolar.com.tr database alongside the newer work.

The early repertory shows her range within a small company. The database credits her in Gülünç Kibarlar in 2014, an adaptation of Molière's Les Précieuses ridicules, in a children's Bremen Mızıkacıları in 2015, and in Fehim Paşa Konağı in 2016, the Turan Oflazoğlu play that is a staple of the Turkish repertoire. In 2018 came the first run of Hayri Fitler, a Burçhan Göze original that the company revived in 2025.

For most of those years Altı Üstü Kabare was a touring outfit on the Anatolian side of the city. The tiyatrolar.com.tr listing shows the company playing rented rooms such as Akasya Kültür Sanat, Atölye Hangart and Kadıköy Emek Tiyatrosu rather than a home of its own.

Çiftler Çiftler and the award

The work that changed the company's standing is Çiftler Çiftler, a musical cabaret written, directed and scored by Burçhan Göze and performed by the two founders alone. It presents four couples in four unconnected stories: newlyweds Tanju and Hülya sinking under a housing loan, Mehmet and Zeynep who have run away to Istanbul from a family feud, Cemil and Vesile who fall into a phone romance after a wrong number, and Bülent, who abandons football for ballet to get close to his childhood crush Sude. Günay Göze plays all four women, with the costumes and set built in-house by Altı Üstü Atölye.

In 2023 the show brought both performers prizes at the Yeni Tiyatro Dergisi Emek ve Başarı Ödülleri, the theatre magazine's annual labour and achievement awards, in their tenth international edition. Günay Göze took the award for best female performance in a comedy or musical for the 2022 to 2023 season, and Burçhan Göze the male equivalent. It is the company's first and, so far, only nationally recognised acting honour and it now sits at the top of every listing they publish.

Audience response tracks the award. On Biletinial the show carries a five-out-of-five average from 87 reviews, 83 of them five stars and four of them four stars, with no lower marks recorded at the time of writing.

A stage of their own

On 2 September 2023 Altı Üstü Kabare began performing on its own stage in Ataşehir, on the Asian side of Istanbul, ending eight years of hiring rooms. The company also runs creative drama, diction and acting classes from the same premises, which is how a two-person cabaret pays for a permanent building.

Having a home has let the repertory grow quickly. The tiyatrolar.com.tr profile lists Günay Göze in seven productions currently on stage: Parkkolikler, Çiftler Çiftler, Korkunç Komik Ölümler from 2023, 90'lar and Aşk Eski Bir Yalan from 2024, and Çirkin Yavru, Hayri Fitler and Olaylar Çok Büyük from 2025. In several of those she is credited as assistant director as well as performer, and in Çirkin Yavru, a version of The Ugly Duckling for children, she plays Mother Duck, the first swan and the narrator.

The 2025 revival of Hayri Fitler is the most ambitious piece on the current bill. Its premise is that in 1945 Hitler and Eva Braun are sent back from hell to Istanbul by an angel of democracy, who gives Hitler the chance to prove he can become a good person; the play follows the pair through a string of jobs and humiliations in the city. Burçhan Göze wrote, directed and composed it, Yiğit Güçlü arranged the music, Günay Göze choreographed the dance and performs alongside Göze and Kağan Şenbaş. It runs around two and a half hours in two acts, which is long for a room this size and a sign of how far the company has moved from short cabaret sketches.

The company's site also lists an 18-plus comedy, Bir Takım Terslikler, described as everyday situations met with humorous resistance and offering audience participation, in two acts over 90 minutes, and a newer title, Farklar Fertler Fırtlar, for which no details have yet been published.

Where things stand in September 2026

As of early September 2026 the company's home page is advertising performances on Friday 11, Saturday 12 and Friday 25 September, with the three headline titles still Çiftler Çiftler, Korkunç Komik Ölümler and Hayri Fitler. Tickets are sold through Biletinial, Bubilet and Biletix, with the Biletinial listing for Çiftler Çiftler last showing 20:30 starts and prices from 750 Turkish lira with a 16-plus age guidance.

There is no evidence of a national tour, a television crossover or a change of personnel. What the record shows instead is a company that has spent eleven years doing one thing in one city, and that has, since the 2023 award and the move into its own building, become one of the few places in Istanbul where the musical cabaret form is still written, composed and performed by the same two people every week.