Kınar Hanım

Kınar Hanım — Biography

Kınar Hanım was among the first generation of women on the Turkish stage, with a stage career spanning the late Ottoman Empire and the early Republic. A Turkish Armenian actress, she is counted among the first two Armenian women to found their own theater in Ottoman times; she was among the first artists of the Darülbedayi and, alongside Güllü Agop and Mardiros Mınakyan, is remembered as a pioneer of native theater in Turkey.

She first appeared on stage at fourteen in Tekirdağ, in Körün Oğlu, with the Fasulyeciyan company, where her mother also worked. In 1894 she joined the same company on a Balkan tour that lasted until 1900, and married a fellow member of the troupe in those years. Returning in 1901, she joined the Mınakyan company and rose to leading actress; after 1908 the companies multiplying in the freer climate of the Second Constitutional Era competed for her. In 1912 she co-founded the Yeni Osmanlı Tiyatrosu in Kadıköy with Zabel Binemeciyan and Sırapyon Hekimyan; it stayed open until Binemeciyan's death in 1915.

She joined the Darülbedayi on its founding, and on January 19, 1916, appeared in Çürük Temel, an adaptation of a play by Émile Fabre, at the gala marking the opening of its theater section. She worked with Muhsin Ertuğrul and Raşit Rıza, and her best-known roles include Dalida, Kantocu Kız, Ekmekçi Kadın, Fanfan and Gülnihal. Ertuğrul called her the most competent actress of Turkish theater of her day. The poet Ece Ayhan drew on her for his first collection, Kınar Hanım'ın Denizleri (1959), and she was portrayed in the 1979 film Afife Jale. She retired from the stage in the 1930s and died at her home in Kadıköy in 1950.