Sevim Burak’s protest theatre: understanding Sevim Burak through Adorno

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore Sevim Burak’s theatre through Adorno’s “negative dialectics” and “culture industry” theories. The article claims that Burak’s theatre is revolutionary in the sense that it challenges the traditional norms of theatre based on representation of real life. Burak, in contrast to traditional theatrical forms, creates a form negating real life and resisting against any form of mimetic representation. However, this does not turn her theatre into an apolitical, anti-social, or extremely individualistic one as Burak’s form is rooted in the social and parental background of the playwright. However, her unique form was expelled from the literary circles and has long been neglected by scholars, which the article claims is the result of the reflections of Adorno’s “culture industry” on the literary scene in Turkey. Thus, the final claim of the article is that Burak’s theatre is revolutionary and a protest not due to its subject matter but to its form.