Arts & Theatre · Theatre
Tülay Günal
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TicketsArts & Theatre · TROradan Bakınca MutluyuzTrump Stage · İstanbulTicketsArts & Theatre · TROradan Bakınca MutluyuzTrump Stage · İstanbulTicketsArts & Theatre · TROradan Bakınca MutluyuzSahne Dragos · İstanbulTicketsArts & Theatre · TROradan Bakınca MutluyuzTekirdağ Yahya Kemal Beyatlı Kültür Merkezi Büyük Salon · TekirdağTicketsArts & Theatre · TROradan Bakınca MutluyuzTekirdağ Yahya Kemal Beyatlı Kültür Merkezi Büyük Salon · TekirdağTicketsArts & Theatre · TROradan Bakınca MutluyuzBostanlı Karşıyaka Theatre · İzmirTicketsArts & Theatre · TROradan Bakınca MutluyuzBAOB Sahne · BursaTicketsThe profile · researched 26 October 2026
Tülay Günal and the empty chair at Genco Erkal's table
A state-theatre actress of three decades who sang before she acted, Günal spent 2025 rebuilding her late mentor Genco Erkal's Nâzım-and-Brecht evening as its director, and opened a new two-hander comedy in Istanbul on 20 October 2026.
Kastamonu, the DTCF, and a salaried start in Diyarbakır
Tülay Günal was born on 9 September 1970 in Kastamonu and trained in the theatre department of Ankara University's Faculty of Languages, History and Geography, the DTCF. Singing paid first: after graduating she spent a period in Istanbul working as a vocalist, including work alongside Işın Karaca, before taking an acting contract inside the state system.
That contract was at Diyarbakır State Theatre, where she began acting professionally in 1993 — a regional branch posting rather than an Istanbul launch. She later transferred within the Devlet Tiyatroları network and has held a position at Ankara State Theatre since 2007, working the private stages in parallel rather than instead.
She has been blunt about what the arrangement costs. Speaking to Posta in November 2019, she said she had gone hungry and thirsty for theatre but had never sold her honour, criticised actors who treat the stage as a waiting room for a television contract, and named the near-absence of state and corporate sponsorship for Turkish theatre as the central structural problem. In the same interview she said she had no children, citing conditions in the country.
Jeanne d'Arc, a beetle, and the Brecht that won the prize
Her private-theatre work in the 2000s ran through the companies that defined the period. She played Jeanne d'Arc in Jeanne D'Arc'ın Öteki Ölümü at Oyun Atölyesi in 2005, opposite Haluk Bilginer and Güven Kıraç, and took the lead in Böcek at DOT in 2006.
The association that mattered most was with Dostlar Tiyatrosu, the company Genco Erkal founded in 1969. Her performance in Ben Bertolt Brecht there won the Best Musical or Comedy Actress award at the 16th Afife Theatre Awards in 2012 — the only entry under her name in that category's winners table, and the credential most often attached to her in Turkish listings since.
By 2019 she was carrying a large-cast musical biography: Kaldırım Serçesi, built around the life of Édith Piaf, directed by Yiğit Sertdemir and performed with an orchestra. It is the clearest illustration of how the two halves of her training fit together — the singing is not a sideline she abandoned but a working instrument she keeps casting herself against.
The screen work, and what it funded
Film and television gave her the national profile the state payroll does not. She appeared in Sis ve Gece in 2007 and in Küçük Günahlar in 2011; on television she was in Asi on Kanal D between 2007 and 2009, played Suzan in Umutsuz Ev Kadınları from 2012 to 2014, and Feyza Karasu in Kördüğüm in 2016.
Rüzgârda Salınan Nilüfer, released in 2016, brought her a second major prize: Best Supporting Actress in Cinema at the 22nd Sadri Alışık Awards in 2017. The film Birlikte Öleceğiz followed in 2021.
Her longest recent screen run was Hudutsuz Sevda, which premiered on 21 September 2023 and in which she played Nergiz Serin Leto through to 2025. That series ending is what cleared the calendar for the two stage projects she is now running.
Taking over the table after July 2024
In the summer of 2016, Erkal and Günal first staged Güneşin Sofrasında – Nâzım ile Brecht, which he adapted and directed and in which the two of them performed together. It moved to the Kenter Tiyatrosu in Istanbul for the winter season, playing at 20:30 with tickets at 50 lira and 30 lira concession — a reminder of how little a seat at a Turkish private theatre cost a decade ago, against the four-figure prices of 2026.
Erkal died on 31 July 2024 at the age of 86, after treatment for blood cancer. A memorial was held for him on 2 August 2024 at the Harbiye Muhsin Ertuğrul stage before his burial at Zincirlikuyu.
Günal's answer was to rebuild the evening rather than retire it. Güneşin Sofrasında – Nâzım, Brecht ve Genco appeared in 2025 with Günal directing and performing opposite Yurdaer Okur: a single act of 80 minutes, rated 12 and over, using furniture and props from Erkal's own career as its staging vocabulary. Selen Erkal designed the set, Özlem Kaya the costumes and Kemal Yiğitcan the lighting, with a quartet playing arrangements drawn from Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Cem Karaca and Zülfü Livaneli. It played Fişekhane Ana Sahne in Istanbul on 14 May 2025 and the Bostanlı Suat Taşer Tiyatrosu in İzmir the following night, and is still carried as an active production. Audience scoring on the Turkish listings site tiyatrolar.com.tr sits at 8.1 out of 10 across 17 ratings — a small sample, but the only aggregated feedback published for it.
Autumn 2026: a live broadcast going wrong
The current work is Oradan Bakınca Mutluyuz, written and directed by Özen Yula and produced by Donkişot Tiyatro. It premiered on 20 October 2026 at the Trump Kültür ve Gösteri Merkezi in Istanbul, with Günal as talk-show host Didem Özsoy and Fırat Tanış as her guest, the actor Ayaz Yurdönü. The premise is a single act set inside a live broadcast on the one night when a Turkey national match and the finale of a popular series are both on air, leaving the programme with almost no audience and its two occupants with nothing to do but escalate.
Cumhuriyet's Kültür Rotası column flagged the opening on 4 October 2026, describing it as a one-act comedy that drags the audience into an absurd evening and framing the night as the pair's greatest test. The premiere itself drew the magazine press rather than the critics: Betül Demir and Ayşegül Aldinç were both photographed there and the resulting coverage in Milliyet on 22 October 2026 was about the guest list, not the production. No substantial critical notice has been published yet, which is worth saying plainly — the play's standing at this point rests on its authorship and its two names, not on reviews.
Alongside it, Günal remains listed as vocalist on Nazım'a Caz Şarkıları, the Nâzım Hikmet jazz-settings programme, which keeps the singing side of her work in circulation between theatre runs. Her position at Ankara State Theatre, held since 2007, continues underneath all of it.
The show, now
The show on sale now is Oradan Bakınca Mutluyuz, a single-act comedy written and directed by Özen Yula for Donkişot Tiyatro, in which Günal and Fırat Tanış play a talk-show host and her guest actor trying to fill a live broadcast on the night a Turkey national match and a series finale have taken the entire audience elsewhere. It is a two-hander with no support act and no interval; the staging is the television studio itself, designed by Eylül Gürcan, with video design by R. Onur Duru and music by Kemal Günüç, and the comedy comes from the format collapsing in real time rather than from set changes. Curtain is 20:30 at almost every date. After the 20 October 2026 premiere at the Trump Kültür ve Gösteri Merkezi in Istanbul, the listed November run covers Duru Tiyatro at Watergarden on 3 November, Trump again on 9 and 12 November, Sahne Dragos on 18 November, the Yahya Kemal Beyatlı Kültür Merkezi in Tekirdağ on 22 November, the Bostanlı Suat Taşer Tiyatrosu in İzmir on 26 November and BAOB Sahne in Bursa on 30 November, with seats from about 1,500 lira and the Istanbul premiere priced from 1,650. Published feedback so far is premiere reportage rather than criticism; the nearest thing to an audience verdict on Günal's current stage work is the 8.1-out-of-10 score from 17 ratings on tiyatrolar.com.tr for her other active piece, the 80-minute Güneşin Sofrasında – Nâzım, Brecht ve Genco, which she directs and performs with Yurdaer Okur using props and furniture from Genco Erkal's career.
Researched from tr.wikipedia.org · tiyatrolar.com.tr · tiyatrolar.com.tr · tiyatrolar.com.tr · fisekhane.com · posta.com.tr · cumhuriyet.com.tr · milliyet.com.tr