Dünya Dilleri, Edebiyatları ve Çeviri Çalışmaları Dergisi

Öz

Translation is one of the primary transmitters of literary and cultural products and phenomena allowing them to circulate, be reproduced and transferred across time and space. The fame and image pertaining to national literatures, genres and authors as well as even to concepts are formed and transformed by means of translation. Turkish cultural system has transferred many traditions, movements and genres (including those of theatre) from the West ever since the Tanzimat Period, and tried to make them function in their own rights under the very circumstances of the target culture. Turkish theatre, with a long oral and performative theatrical tradition, provides the translation studies scholar with a variety of fields and topics of research as it has been exposed to constant transfer of approaches and concepts of the Western written and literary forms of theatre. This research looks into the transformation of the concepts “absurd,” “tragedy” and “comedy” by means of the retranslation and rewriting practices of Tiyatrotem, who have reproduced some canonical plays of Western culture with the intention of coming up with texts that are both readable and performable on shadow screen. The research centers around a variety of Tiyatrotem’s rewritings and retranslations of Richard III, a historical tragedy by William Shakespeare; Tartuffe, a classical comedy by Molière; and Alfred Jarry’s plays Ubu Roi and Ubu Enchaîné, the first examples of the Theatre of the Absurd as most scholars of literary studies have agreed. The main aim of this research is to focus on four rewritings by Tiyatrotem: Âlem Buysa Kral Übü (a rewriting of Ubu Roi), Gündüz Niyetine (a rewriting of Ubu Enchaîné), III. Riçırd Faciası (a rewriting of Richard III), and Tartüf Bey (a rewriting of Tartuffe). Focusing on these four rewritings of Western canonical plays, the transformation of the definitions of the concepts “absurd,” “tragedy” and “comedy” are sought. The main argument that follows the analysis and evaluation of the above-mentioned works is that Tiyatrotem’s retranslations and rewritings not only transform the definitions of these concepts and sometimes deconstruct them, but they also lead to new and innovative processes of deconstruction, as well as to discussions and tendencies in terms of the theatrical, aesthetic and performative structures and traditions prevailing in the receiving culture.