From Novel to the Theatre: Yaprak Dökümü, Eski Şarkı

Abstract

Reşat Nuri Güntekin is one of the prolific authors of Turkish literature. He owns a lot of literary works within novel and theatre play genres. He studied all components of theatre from decors to play writing, and he wrote many articles. His novels, Yaprak Dökümü and Eski Hastalık were made into theatre plays by Reşat Nuri Güntekin. Yaprak Dökümü was published as a novel in 1930 and staged in 1943-1944. Eski Hastalık (the Old Illness) was renamed as Eski Şarkı (the Old Song) as a theatre play. It was published as a novel in 1938 and staged in 1951. It is necessary to make some technical changes at the time of transformation from novel to theatre play. In this article, these changes are analyzed in terms of narrative, character, time and place. In this way, a theoretical background was tried to be made. Then a comparison between the novels (Yaprak Dökümü - Eski Hastalık) and theatre plays (Yaprak Dökümü - Eski Şarkı) was made. In this way the differences between the novels and theatre plays were determined and the methods used at the time of transformation were revealed. In the conclusion the effects and reasons of the differences were discussed.