Selahattin Taşdöğen

Erzurum, a children's theatre, and a painter's degree

Taşdöğen was born on 19 July 1951 in Erzurum, in eastern Anatolia, and his working life on stage began in 1969, at eighteen, with the Keloğlan Çocuk Tiyatrosu. Children's theatre in Turkey at that time was a touring trade rather than a rehearsal-room apprenticeship: short plays, school halls, matinees, and a company that moved. He followed it with the Türkbank Çocuk Tiyatrosu, and screen work started in 1974.

The formal qualification arrived much later and in a different discipline. He took his degree from Marmara University's fine arts school, in the painting department, in 1986 — seventeen years after his first professional engagement. That training was not decorative: he is credited with decor work on the 2013 production Nafile Dünya, and the visual side of the job has stayed part of what he does rather than being abandoned for acting.

Alongside the performing he spent more than nine years teaching in schools, covering art, art history and tourism. It is the sort of parallel career that a jobbing Turkish stage actor of his generation often needed, and it helps explain a working method that reads as unhurried and methodical rather than driven by visibility.

The Istanbul company circuit

The roll-call of companies Taşdöğen has worked with amounts to a map of Istanbul's commercial and municipal theatre over four decades: Bakırköy Komedi Tiyatrosu, İstanbul Tiyatrosu, Ercan Yazgan Tiyatrosu, Kenan Büke Tiyatrosu, the İBB Şehir Tiyatroları, the Levent Kırca–Oya Başar Tiyatrosu and the Yasemin Yalçın Tiyatrosu. Those are not interchangeable houses. The Şehir Tiyatroları is the municipal repertory, with subsidised seasons and a permanent ensemble; the Kırca and Yalçın companies came out of the sketch-comedy and boulevard tradition, built around a star name and a punishing touring schedule.

Moving between the two worlds is the defining fact of his stage career. It gave him the technical grounding of repertory and the timing of comedy played to a thousand-seat culture centre where the back row has paid for laughs. The supporting comic character — the uncle, the neighbour, the inventor, the elder who thinks he is in charge — is the role that recurs, and the one he has refined.

More recently he has moved behind the production as well as in front of it. He appeared in Tahta Çanak in 2023, credited both as an actor and as its director, which remains his most recent directing credit on the Turkish listings sites.

The television face

Wider recognition came from Turkish comedy series in the 1990s and 2000s. He played Necmi Dede in Çılgın Bediş, Mucittin in Ayrılsak da Beraberiz across its 1999–2003 run, and Kudret in En Son Babalar Duyar; later came Geniş Aile in 2011 and Bizim Hikaye in 2019. The parts share a register — a fixed, slightly aggrieved dignity, played straight while everything around the character collapses.

In cinema he appeared in Yılmaz Erdoğan's Vizontele in 2001 and its sequel Vizontele Tuuba in 2003, in 7 Kocalı Hürmüz in 2009 and in Eyyvah Eyvah 3 in 2014. Turkish film databases list his screen credits running continuously from 1983 into the present, with recent projects attached for 2025 and 2026 including Kuzgun and Gelenek Görenek. He is in his seventy-sixth year and has not narrowed the range of formats he works in.

The family is an acting family. His brothers Erkan and Naci Taşdöğen also act; Selay Taşdöğen, one of his four children, works in voice acting and dubbing. He married the actress Nevin Yılmaz in Üsküdar, Istanbul, in the summer of 2010.

Soytarılar: two clowns nobody books any more

The current production is Soytarılar — Jesters — written and directed by Serkan Budak and produced by Batı Performans Sanatları Prodüksiyon. It is a four-hander: Taşdöğen and Ferdi Akarnur as the two leads, with Nur Yoldaş and Buse Demirel; Demet Altuner is assistant director.

The premise sits close to the actors playing it. Suat and Sami were once famous clowns. They are now forgotten, living together in a worn-out home, putting word about everywhere that they would like to work again, and an unexpected visitor arrives. The play is billed as a comedy, but its subject is loneliness in later life and the particular indignity of a performer who has outlived the demand for the act. Budak writes it as one continuous piece rather than a two-act boulevard comedy, which keeps the pressure on the pair and leaves no interval for the audience to shake the tone off.

Budak is a working director with a commercial catalogue behind him — Zaptiye in 2017, Etekler ve Pantolonlar in 2019, Evlilik Komedisi and the Cihat Tamer and Zihni Göktay two-hander Bir Varmış Bir Yokmuş in 2024, Yalancının Resmi in 2025. The pattern is clear: pieces built around veteran stage actors, designed to tour. Soytarılar is the same construction, and Taşdöğen is the reason it stands up.

The design team is small and consistent: Ramazan and Gökhan Kanur on the set, Nuray Saraçoğlu on costume, Mustafa Algül handling both lighting and sound.

Where things stand, September 2026

Soytarılar opened in İzmir on 8 July 2026 at the Bornova Ayfer Feray open-air theatre, and played two further İzmir stages immediately after — the Urladam Ağaçlı Sahne on 9 July and the Bostanlı Suat Taşer Salonu on 10 July. Opening a new piece outdoors in an Aegean July is a test of a script's carrying power more than a soft launch.

The autumn routing on sale is substantial. It returns to the same two İzmir rooms on 9 and 10 October, runs down the Aegean through Aydın on 11 October, Didim on 12 October, Muğla on 13 October, Denizli on 14 October, Nazilli on 15 October, Marmaris on 16 October, Fethiye on 17 October and Bodrum on 18 October, then reaches Istanbul at the Beylikdüzü Atatürk Kültür ve Sanat Merkezi on 24 October and Fişekhane Ana Sahne on 27 October. Ankara follows on 29 October at Kulis Sanat Tiyatrosu Panora and 31 October in Etimesgut. November takes it to Bandırma and Susurluk on 7 and 8 November, Karabük, Bartın, Kastamonu and Zonguldak from 11 to 14 November, and then south to Mezitli, İskenderun, Dörtyol, Gaziantep, Nevşehir and Aksaray between 17 and 22 November.

Ticket prices across that run start between 800 and 1,350 lira depending on the town, with the cheapest seats in municipal halls such as Etimesgut and the dearest in Gaziantep. The audience score on the main ticket agent's listing stands at 4.0 out of 5. Turkish press coverage so far has been previews and tour announcements rather than notices from critics, so the honest position is that the piece has a route, a rating and a returning booking in İzmir, and no reviewed verdict yet.