Stage to Digital Screen: Theatre Play Adaptations in Turkish Streaming Services

Abstract

With the launch of streaming services in the last decade, the television industry has begun to deal with the hunger for content more than ever. As the original screenplays could not satisfy the demand in this turmoil, adaptations from different art forms continue to be a lifesaver for the creators. Even though literature has still been the greatest source for adaptations since the beginning of cinema and television, classical and modern theatre plays are also being preferred as an alternative. Different from a literature text which offers freedom to the writer to use descriptions to implant all details to the narrative, being based on stage with limited visualization makes dialog the main element for the transfer of the whole text of a theatre play. On the other hand, a stage-to-screen adaptation allows the play text to transcend the boundaries of time and space. In 2021, Turkish streaming service GAIN released two mini-series adapted from theatre plays. The first one, Metot (Method, Serkan Keskin, 2021), which focuses on the relentless competition of four whitecollar workers in a job interview, was adapted with high level of fidelity to the main text, and thus suits Geoffrey Wagner's "transposition" model. While the other series Hamlet (Kaan Müjdeci, 2021) with its extremely local evil uncle who corrupts the town, appears as a different example, and suits Wagner's "commentary" model by retelling Shakespeare's original text with codes of eastern culture in 21st century. In conclusion, it's possible to argue that, regardless of their model, adaptations give theatre plays new spirits to survive forever in our digital libraries. © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2022 All rights reserved.