Veteran theater actress and director Gülriz Sururi died on Dec. 31. She was 90.
Her foster daughter, Zeynep Miraç Özkartal, said, “We followed her will as she wanted a silent funeral ceremony. She wanted us to announce her death after the funeral ceremony. She had been suffering from problems with her digestive system for some time and we lost her yesterday [Dec. 31]. We cannot share any other information out of respect for her will.” She was buried next to her husband (m. 1968–1997) Engin Cezzar.[2]Mavi Boncuk |
Gülriz (Gülruz) Sururi (24 July 1929 – 31 December 2018) was a Turkish drama actress and author. She presented a TV cooking show and co-owned a theatre.
She was born in İstanbul, Turkey on 24 July 1929. Her father Lütfullah was the founder of the first Turkish Musical theatre and her mother Suzan was a prima donna.
She studied acting and singing at the Municipal Conservatoire of Istanbul. In 1942, she began her drama career at the Children's Section of the City Theatre of Istanbul accepting the advise of the theatre director Muhsin Ertuğrul (1892–1979). In 1955, she took the stage at Muammer Karaca Theatre. Sururi transferred to Haldun Dormen Theatre in 1960. In 1962, she founded with Engin Cezzar their own theatre bearing their names.
She was named "The Woman of the Year" by the Turkish Women's Association in 1966. On 18 September 1968, she married to Engin Cezzar. In the 1990s, she presented five years long a cooking show A La Luna in the television channel TRT. In 1998, she was given the honorary title of state artist by the Ministry of Culture. She ended her acting career after the play Söyleyeceklerim Var in 1999.
Performances (selected)
1997 Söyleyeceklerim Var (1999) – Gülriz Sururi-Engin Cezzar Theatre
1983 Kaldırım Serçesi (by Başar Sabuncu from Edith Piaf's autobiography) – Gülriz Sururi-Engin Cezzar Theatre
1980 Kabare (by Joe Masteroff) – Gülriz Sururi-Engin Cezzar Theatre
Ferhat İle Şirin – Gülriz Sururi-Engin Cezzar Theatre
1966 Teneke (by Yaşar Kemal) – Gülriz Sururi-Engin Cezzar Theatre
1963 Keşanlı Ali Destanı (by Haldun Taner) – Gülriz Sururi-Engin Cezzar Theatre
Zilli Zarife – Gülriz Sururi-Engin Cezzar Theatre
1961 Sokak Kızı İrma (by Alexandre Breffort, Marguerite Monnot) – Dormen Theatre
1959 Sözde Melekler – Dormen Theatre
Plays directed (selected)
Kısmet ("Chance") (play) – State Theatre of Adana
Fosforlu Cevriye ("Cevriye the Luminous") (musical) – State Theatre of Ankara
Biz Sıfırdan Başladık ("We Started from Scratch") – Konçinalar Company
Books
Kıldan İnce Kılıçtan Keskince ("Thinner than the Hair, Sharper than the Sword") (1978) (memoir)
Biz Kadınlar ("We Women") (1987) (essay)
Bir An Gelir ("The Moment Comes") (2003) (memoir)
Girmediğim Sokaklarda ("In The Streets I've Never Been To") (2003) (story)
Gülriz'in Mutfağından ("From Gülriz's Cuisine") (2003) (cook book)
Seni Seviyorum ("I love You") (2004) (novel)By Claudia Roth Pierpont
Feeling more than usually restless, James Baldwin flew from New York to Paris in the late summer of 1961, and from there to Israel. Then, rather than proceed as he had planned to Africa—a part of the world he was not ready to confront—he decided to visit a friend in Istanbul. Baldwin’s arrival at his Turkish friend’s door, in the midst of a party, was, as the friend recalled, a great surprise: two rings of the bell, and there stood a small and bedraggled black man with a battered suitcase and enormous eyes.
Engin Cezzar was a Turkish actor who had worked with Baldwin in New York, and he excitedly introduced “Jimmy Baldwin, of literary fame, the famous black American novelist” to the roomful of intellectuals and artists. Baldwin, in his element, eventually fell asleep in an actress’s lap. It soon became clear that Baldwin was in terrible shape: exhausted, in poor health, worried that he was losing sight of his aims both as a writer and as a man. He desperately needed to be taken care of, Cezzar said; or, in the more dramatic terms that Baldwin used throughout his life, to be saved. His suitcase contained the manuscript of a long and ambitious novel that he had been working on for years, and that had already brought him to the brink of suicide. Of the many things that the wandering writer hoped to find—friends, rest, peace of mind—his single overwhelming need, his only real hope of salvation, was to finish the book. MORE at NEW YORKER
Baldwin at a typewriter in his Istanbul apartment. (Sedat Pakay)
Baldwin made an impression in Turkey, too, where he lived off and on for a decade or so, beginning in 1961 — though his footprints, these days, can be hard to find. His overlooked sojourn was a period of prodigious creative production and collaboration with Turkish artists, in a place he came to regard as a sanctuary — despite Turkey’s own political turbulence — from the racism, homophobia and scarring civil rights struggle back home.
He could no longer work in the United States, he told his friend, the drama critic Zeynep Oral. “I can’t breathe,” she quoted him as saying. “I have to look from outside.” Istanbul, a refuge for exiles, immigrants and wanderers that reminded Baldwin of Harlem, was in many ways an ideal vantage point. “Located on the margin of continents — between Europe and Asia, in the vicinity of Africa and the Middle East — Turkey provided a haven where Baldwin worked on some of his most important, and arguably most American, works,” Magdalena Zaborowska, a professor of African American and immigrant literature at the University of Michigan, wrote in her book “James Baldwin’s Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile.”
Baldwin stands on a bridge overlooking the Golden Horn. (Sedat Pakay)
Baldwin completed the novel “Another Country” and wrote the essays that became “No Name in the Street” in Turkey. He directed a play on prison life in Turkey — though he spoke the language haltingly — and supported friends putting on a production of “Hair.” His salon included the jazz singer Bertice Reading, and trumpeter Don Cherry, who played at Baldwin’s legendary parties in Istanbul. Marlon Brando and Alex Haley visited his home on the Bosporus.(More at SOURCE)
[2] Engin Cezzar was born in Istanbul in 1940. He started having an interest in theater when he studied at Robert College in Istanbul. He went to the USA and studied at Yale Drama School and the Actors Studio. He debuted in the Istanbul Municipality Theatre with the role of Hamlet. Later, he founded “Gülriz Sururi – Engin Cezzar Theatre” with Gülriz Sururi, where he served as a director and actor. Cezzar also performed and worked at the Dormen Theatre, the Devekuşu Kabare, the Istanbul State Theatre and the Antalya State Theatre. He has performed in films and TV dramas as well. He directed and produced the film “Kaldırım Serçesi” and “Ayşe Opereti”, which was written by his wife Gülriz Sururi. There is a biographic book “Engin Cezzar’ı Takdimimdir” written by İzeddin Çalışlar (2005).Actor:
Kız Tavlama Sanatı, Ayak Takım Arasında, Teneke, Keşanlı Ali Destanı, Midas’ın Kulakları, Canlı Maymun Lokantası, Otello, Hamlet
Director:
Ayşe Opereti, Kadı
Filmography:
1981, Bay Alkolü Takdimimdir
1988, Time Line
1988, Keşanlı Ali Destanı
1989, Kaldırım Serçesi
2000, Hızır Bey
2002, Abdülhamit Düşerken
2006, Sağır Oda
2009, Arvas
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