Cultural labor market in İstanbul: An analysis on the lighting design subfield

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2748993_(Table of contents)

This thesis aims to analyze lighting designers and technicians working with alternative theaters in Istanbul from the perspective of cultural labor. The field of theater in Turkey is divided into two categories: subsidized/institutional theaters and nonsubsidized/ independent theaters. Within the unpaid/independent theaters, alternative theaters have gained a significant position in the Istanbul theater field since the mid-2000s with their artistic productions. Distinct from conventional forms of theater production, alternative theaters engage in contemporary artistic explorations of the theater space, and the performance considering the design elements of a theater play. Among these design elements, lighting design holds particular importance in terms of its contribution to a play. In this thesis, I will examine the lighting designers working with alternative theaters in Istanbul in the context of labor relations with an ethnographic method. I will focus on my own profession, in which I have been working with alternative theaters as a lighting technician since 2014 and as a lighting designer since 2022, from an autoethnographic perspective.In Turkey, there is no academic study conducted with particular attention to theater professions and the experiences of those who work in this field. Therefore, with this study, on the one hand, I aim to contribute to the academic literature in this sense, and on the other hand, I will describe the field of theater, where labor relations are mostly neglected, through the words and working experiences of its individuals whose profession is to make visible rather than to be visible.