Foto: Esra Rotthoff

Nurkan Erpulat

Nurkan Erpulat, born in 1974 in Ankara, studied acting in Izmir and directing at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. His directing projects include Jenseits – Bist Du schwul oder bist Du Türke? (Beyond – Are You Gay or Are You Turkish?) (2008) at HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin; an adaptation of Kafka’s The Castle (2011) at Deutsches Theater Berlin; and Maxim Gorki’s Children of the Sun (2012) at Volkstheater Vienna. In 2011 he staged the play Verrücktes Blut (Crazy Blood), developed with Jens Hillje, at Ballhaus Naunynstraße in Berlin, which was selected for the Berlin Theater Meeting and the Mülheim Theater Festival in that same year. Theater heute chose Verrücktes Blut as Play of the Year and Erpulat as Young Director of the Year. From 2011 to 2013 he was in-house director at Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus. He is currently in-house director at Maxim Gorki Theater, where he has staged several productions, including Olga Grjasnowa’s Die juristische Unschärfe einer Ehe (The Legal Haziness of a Marriage), Tina Müller’s Love It or Leave It!, and Jugend ohne Gott (Youth without God) (based on Ödön von Horvath’s novel). This year he will direct his first opera, Jules Massenet’s Werther, and head the directing department at the Academy for Performing Arts, Bavaria.
 
Nurkan Erpulat was a resident at Tarabya Cultural Academy from December 2012 to January 2013 and from October 2015 to June 2016.