Sedef Ecer (born 1965) is a Turkish-French playwright, novelist, actress and screenwriter. She began her career as a child film actress in Turkey, and later moved to France. She has written a number of plays in both Turkish and French, which have been widely translated, and her first novel was published in 2021.

Biography

Ecer was born in Istanbul in 1965.^[1][2][3] She attended Boğaziçi University.^[3] She was a child film actress,^[4] and says that she appeared in around 25 Turkish feature films between the ages of three and 10.^[5][6] She continued to act as an adult and appeared in the 1994 Turkish drama Yengeç Sepeti.^[7]

In 2008 she wrote the French play Sur le seuil, which she and a co-translator subsequently translated into Turkish as Eşikte.^[8] It was also translated into Polish and into Hebrew and Persian radio adaptations.^[8] It was performed at the Cent Quatre and the Maison des Auteurs in 2009,^[9] and at the İstanbul Tiyatro Festivali in 2010.^[8] In 2011 she co-wrote and appeared in the French television comedy film Comme chez soi.^[10][11] In 2013 she was the artist-in-residence at the Maison d'Europe et d'Orient.^[12]

As part of a writer-in-residence programme in Île-de-France in 2010 she wrote the play A la périphérie, which in 2010 received a Guérande theatrical writing prize.^[13][11] In 2014 it was staged at the Théâtre Jean-Vilar in Suresnes, directed by Thomas Bellorini.^[14] In 2014/2015 it was translated into German as Am Rand and performed at the Theater der Stadt Aalen, directed by Tina Brüggemann.^[15][16] The Turkish version, Kenardakiler, was performed at TOY Istanbul in 2016/2017.^[17][18] In 2019 an English language version, At the Periphery, translated from the Turkish by Evren Odcikin, was performed at the Crowded Fire Theater in San Francisco (directed by Erin Gilley).^[19] A review of a 2020 season (retitled On the Periphery) by Broadway World described the production as "hauntingly" presenting "the plight of social outcasts living on the periphery of 1990's Istanbul".^[20]

In 2015 her Turkish play e-mülteci.com premiered at the International Izmir Festival. It was subsequently translated into French and English under the titles e-passeur.com and e.smuggler.com respectively. It was performed at a number of French theatres, and a staged reading directed by Lisa Rothe took place at the New York Public Library in 2018.^[21] In 2016 her play Lady First, a French-language political satire, was performed at the Théâtre du Peuple, directed by Vincent Goethals.^[22][23] An article in L'Alsace noted that it was based on a short piece Ecer had presented at the theatre in 2012; Goethals had worked with her to develop a longer piece.^[22] It was subsequently performed at the Opéra-Théâtre de Metz Métropole in 2017 and 2018.^[24]

Ecer's first novel in French, Trésor national, was published in 2021. It is about the narrator's relationship with her mother, a famous Turkish actress, and links the actress's rise and decline to Turkey's political fortunes from the 1960s to the present day.^[25] The novel was inspired by her own experiences as a child film star.^[5]

In 2023 she held the Randell Cottage Writers' Residency in Wellington, New Zealand. She spent her time on the residency writing a historical novel about New Zealand and Turkish women involved with the Gallipoli campaign.^[1]

Selected writing

• Trésor national (French language novel, JC Lattès, 2021)
• Lady First (French language play, 2016)
• e-mülteci.com (Turkish language play, 2015, translated into French and English)
• À la périphérie (French language play, 2014, translated into Turkish, German and English)
• Comme chez soi (French television film, 2011)
• Sur le seuil (French language play, 2008, translated into Turkish, Polish, Hebrew and Persian)

References

External links

• Official website
• Sedef Ecer at IMDb
• L'enfant-star à Istanbullywood, French language podcast about Ecer's childhood film acting