Istanbul theater revamps Shakespeare plays

British playwright William Shakespeare's works have undergone countless adaptations, from silent performances to dance acts, for hundreds of years. In Istanbul, a local theater adapts Shakespeare's plays by "freely translating" and modernizing them in order to render the plays engaging and relatable to a larger audience. 

"There are people who said to me that they were happy that they could understand a Shakespeare play. This is very precious," Onur Ünsal, 30, says in the foyer area of the four-story theater, decorated mainly in black and white. 

Ünsal, who is also a well-known television actor in Turkey, is one of the 12 founders of the Moda Sahnesi, a theater based on Istanbul's Anatolian side, in the Kadikoy district. The group teamed up in 2013. They have since been joined by a number of other actors and actresses. 

They had already performed numerous Shakespeare plays, including "Macbeth" and "Othello," with another theater group in Istanbul. 

Since 2013, they performed "Hamlet" and this year they began staging another Shakespeare classic, "A Midsummer Night's Dream."      

What separates this theater group from the rest is the plain stage decor and ü the modern-day costumes that can consist of jeans or ordinary suits. But, more importantly, what makes the group unique is its translation of the plays' texts into something more understandable by using modern-day language.

Moreover, most of the time in Turkey, Shakespeare plays are performed with an Istanbul accent, i.e. the "received pronunciation" of Turkish. But the Moda Sahnesi troupe uses daily Turkish and common phrases and "accepts the audience is there," says Ünsal. 

Audiences at Moda Sahnesi can hear different Turkish accents, an uncommon...