Beliz Güçbilmez, is an accomplished Turkish playwright, director, dramatic writing teacher, theatre critic, dramaturgist, and theatre theorist.
She is a professor and the Chair of the Department of Dramatic Writing, at Ankara University, in the Faculty of Language, History, and Geography.
Her extensive experience in storytelling and her multifaceted approach gave her the unique perspective to see and translate the essence of narrative. Thanks to her 25 year teaching career, she created a method called the “Magnetic Field Method” for reading and writing stories, which is sophisticated but yet simple to follow, understand, and execute It is followed by book lovers and cinephiles who are all from different walks of life.
Her books, online workshops, lectures and videos are reaching thousands in Turkey who want to better understand stories, storytelling, and the great engineering behind it all. Now she is sharing her knowledge and method with the whole world through this website and her online workshops.
Besides teaching playwriting for a whole twenty years in university theater departments in Turkey, she wrote plays and translated theater theory books – like Marvin Carlson’s Performance and Elinor Fuchs’ The Death of Character and plays from English (Patrick Marber’s Hedda Gabler and Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love. Her plays have been produced in National Theater and Municipal Theaters’ and wrote texts for non-mainstream theater companies in Turkey. She specializes in rereading and rewriting the great literary canon with modern sensibility.
She’s also the writer of two theoretical theater books and has been published in “New Theater Quarterly”(“Uncanny Theatricality: The Representation of the Offstage”)
For the last five years, she has been producing online reading and writing programs where she teaches her own widely lauded “Magnetic Field Method”. She keeps elaborating the method that conceives any fiction as a constellation of metaphors made of the same substance. She is in love with metaphor as a unique cognitive tool that enables all kinds of understanding and narration.
She was born in 1971 in Ankara. After graduating from the Faculty of Political Sciences, Department of Economics, she completed her master’s and doctorate studies at the same university, After working as a research assistant at Mersin University Fine Arts Faculty Stage Decoration and Costume Design Department between 1996-2000, she joined DTCF Theater Department as a lecturer in 2000. She was promoted to associate professor in 2008 and professor in 2014.
In addition to her theoretical studies, she continues to work as a translator and playwright.
Irony and Drama from Sophokles to Stoppard Ankara: Deniz Kitabevi, 2005 [1][2]
Time/Space/Appearance: Miniaturesque form of the Turkish realist plays, Ankara: Deniz Kitabevi, 2006 [2]
Time/Space/Appearance: Miniaturesque form of the Turkish realist plays, Ankara: Dost Kitabevi Yayınları, 2016 (revised, enlarged second edition)
Time/Space/Appearance: The Theatrical Representation of the Past- Miniaturesque form of the Turkish realist plays, Kolekif Kitap, 2023, third edition
Mom, Did I Just Fall? Why Do We Need Fiction? – An Essay on the Relationship Between Fiction and Reality, Kolektif Kitap, 2023
Viva la vida! Frida, 2004,(Ateş Theatre)
Ash-Memory, 2009, (Istanbul State Theatre)
The City of Lost Children, 2010, (Laboratuar) International Istanbul Theatre Festival [5]
One Last Time (co-writer), 2010-2011, (Theatre Oyunevi)
Mitigating Circumstances, 2010 (Domus Sanat Çiftliği) (Adaptation from the short story by Joyce Carol Oates)
Theatre Has Died (w. Şâmil Yılmaz) 2011 (Theatre Oyunevi)
Doyçland: The Colour of The World, 2011 (Theatre Anadolu)
In Front of the Door, 2013
Othello: Audience Revenge Rehearsal, 2015 (written and directed by Beliz Güçbilmez)
Desert Game, 2015, Nilufer Municipality City Theatre
Don’t Wait for Me, Captain, 2019, Nilüfer Municipality City Theatre
Noises in My Head, 2022 Theater for The New City
Ibsen’s Plays /1: The Lady From The Sea – When We Dead Awaken, trans. Beliz Güçbilmez, Ümmühan Kahraman Güneş, Deniz Kitabevi Yayınları, 2006
The Death of Character, Elinor Fuchs, trans. Beliz Güçbilmez, Dost Kitabevi Yayınları, 2003.
Avant-garde Theatre, Christopher Innes, trans. Beliz Güçbilmez, Aziz V. Kahraman, Dost Kitabevi Yayınları, 2004
The Invention of Love/ Collected Plays 2, Tom Stoppard. trans. Beliz Güçbilmez, Şükran Yücel, Hamit Çalışkan, Dost Kitabevi Yayınları, 2000.
History of The Theatre, Oscar G. Brockett, trans. Sevinç Sokullu, Sibel Dinçel, Tülin Sağlam, Semih Çelenk, Selda Öndül, Beliz Güçbilmez, Dost Kitabevi Yayınları, 2000
Performance: A Critical Introduction, Marvin Carlson, trans. Beliz Güçbilmez, Dost Kitabevi Yayınları, 2013
Modern Drama: A Very Short Introduction, Kirsten E. Shepherd-barr, trans. Beliz Güçbilmez, Dost Kitabevi Yayınları, 2019
Arnold Hauser, Social History of Art, editor: Beliz Güçbilmez, çev. Yıldız Gölönü, Deniz Kitabevi Yayınları, 2006.
doi: 10.1017/S0266464X07000059, Published online by Cambridge University Press, 17 May 2007 [10]
Performance: A Prediction Of Nietzsche, Tiyatro Araştırmaları Dergisi, 2006: 21, pp..27-44 [14]
Ironic Utterance and Non-ironic Text in Turkish Theatre, Hece Dergisi, Vol. 124, pp. 104.111 [16]
Tools of Deformation: On Parody and Travesty, Hece Dergisi, Vol. 132, pp.75-79 [17]
Discontented Womb of Turkish Theatre: Hysterics in the Melodramas of Namık Kemal, Tiyatro Araştırmaları Dergisi, 2009:28, p.41-60 [18]
The Hidden Receptacle of Theatre: Sphinx/Off-stage/ Khõra, Tiyatro Araştırmaları Dergisi, Issue: 31 Page: 021-036 DOI: 10.1501/TAD_0000000261 Publication Date:: 2011 [19]
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