Uğur Bilgin

A Rize family, an Istanbul childhood, and the wrong degree first

Uğur Bilgin was born in Istanbul in 1980, into a family that had come from Rize on the eastern Black Sea coast. His father had retired from Devlet Denizyolları, the state maritime line; his mother ran the house. Nothing in that background pointed at a stage, and the household did not encourage one.

He went to Yıldız Technical University and joined the drama society there, which is where an interest hardened into an intention. He wanted formal training in acting and his family refused to allow it, so he finished the degree he had already started and only then applied to the acting department at Dokuz Eylül University in Izmir, where he graduated. One of his classmates was Onur Buldu.

That last detail is worth holding on to. Two decades later Buldu is one of the two men standing beside him on the current tour, and Kirli Sepeti is built almost entirely out of the sort of shared history that begins in a drama school corridor.

From film sets to a single stage credit

Turkish Wikipedia dates his professional career from 2007, and the screen work accumulated steadily rather than spectacularly. He appeared in Kağıt in 2010, Dedemin Fişi in 2016, Kolonya Cumhuriyeti in 2017, Cici Babam in 2018 and Organize İşler 2: Sazan Sarmalı in 2019, with television series including Aşağı Yukarı Yemişlililer and Boynu Bükükler. It is the filmography of a working character actor — supporting parts in mainstream comedies, a face used for texture rather than for top billing.

The theatre record is thinner, and more interesting for it. Turkish theatre databases carry one substantial stage credit against his name between drama school and the present tour: İstibdat Kumpanyası, listed at 2014 and since closed. For the best part of the following decade the stage was not where audiences found him.

Thirteen seasons of other people

Güldür Güldür Show first went out on 1 October 2013, moved from FOX to Show TV, and had reached 447 episodes across thirteen seasons by 18 July 2026. Ali Sunal presents it, Meltem Bozoflu directs, and the scripts come from Eray Akyamaner, Sıla Çetindağ and Uğur Güvercin. Bilgin has been part of the resident ensemble alongside Açelya Topaloğlu, Aylin Kontente, Aziz Aslan, Burak Topaloğlu, Doğa Rutkay, Meltem Yılmazkaya and Onur Atilla; theatre listings record Mesut as his recurring character. The programme has taken three Golden Butterfly awards for best comedy, in 2015, 2017 and 2023 — awards to the show rather than to any individual in it.

A weekly sketch series is a particular kind of apprenticeship. The turnover is relentless and no character is lived in for long, which trains an actor to establish a person in a few seconds and then discard them. It also does something to the relationship with an audience: by the time Bilgin walks onto a stage in Bursa or Eskişehir, the room already recognises the face and has a decade of associations attached to it before he has said anything.

Kirli Sepeti: the basket, opened

Kirli Sepeti — the dirty-laundry basket — is the show that has occupied him since 2025, performed with Onur Buldu and Aziz Aslan and produced by YSM Yapım. The premise is a straight inversion of their day jobs. Three actors who have, in the producers' own framing, given life to hundreds of characters across films, series and sketches now stand on stage with nothing but their own memories: anecdotes they say they have never told publicly, adapted into comic storytelling.

The mechanics are modest and fixed. It runs 85 minutes in a single act, with a 7+ age rating, and typically starts at 20:30 or 21:00 depending on the venue. Costume design is credited to Özge Bekçi Mermer, with the poster designed by Galip Aksular and photographed by Emrah Yağız. There is no supporting company: the three share the billing and the stage.

Announcements for the show describe improvisation as part of the method rather than an occasional flourish, with the material shaped around the absurdities of ordinary life and the night's flow dependent on how the room responds. The advertised effect is of secrets spilling out of the basket and misunderstandings resolving into laughter — closer to three friends competing to tell a story than to a scripted three-hander.

Where the tour stands, September 2026

The run has been building for eighteen months across municipal culture centres and open-air theatres rather than commercial Istanbul stages. It played the Bostanlı Suat Taşer Theatre in Izmir on 6 April 2025 at 16:00, filled the Özer Olgun Cultural Centre in Fethiye on 14 March 2026 in a performance organised with Fethiye Municipality, and returned to Beylikdüzü Atatürk Cultural and Arts Centre on 4 May 2026. On 21 August 2026 it closed the third week of Aliağa Art Days at the Ulaş Bayam Open-Air Theatre, where demand was heavy enough that the single scheduled show was doubled and both sittings played.

The current season opened outdoors and then indoors within four days: Antalya Açıkhava on 3 September 2026 at 21:00, followed by the Red Hall of Çankaya Municipality's Atatürk Arts Centre in Ankara on 6 September 2026 at 20:30, which Bilgin announced as the tour's first stop of the new season with more cities to follow.

Ten dates are on sale as of late September 2026. October takes in the Bostanlı Suat Taşer Theatre on the 2nd, İstinyeArt Performans Arena on the 3rd, Çorlu Ünal Baysan Cultural Centre in Tekirdağ on the 4th, DasDas in Istanbul on the 11th, the Boğaziçi Hall at Bağlarbaşı Congress and Culture Centre on the 17th and Beylikdüzü again on the 18th. December brings the Orhangazi Hall at Merinos in Bursa on the 6th, Yenimahalle Nazım Hikmet Cultural Centre in Ankara on the 10th and the Vehbi Koç Congress Centre in Eskişehir on the 11th, with İnal Aydınoğlu Cultural Centre in Istanbul on 15 January 2027. Tickets start between ₺750 and ₺1,250 depending on the hall — the Ankara municipal venue cheapest, the suburban Istanbul and Tekirdağ centres at the top of the band.