Nadir Sarıbacak
Nadir Sarıbacak is a professional actor and director. He studied Turkish Literature at Çanakkale University and later earned an MFA in Acting from Bahçeşehir University. He began his stage career with the Semaver Kumpanya theater company.
His breakthrough came with Uzak İhtimal (2009), earning multiple Best Actor awards. He later appeared in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep, winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and received the Best Actor award at the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival for Ivy (2015). Sarıbacak has also appeared in TV series such as Şubat and Five Brothers. His film Gazelle, which he directed and starred in, has received awards at international film festivals. He moved to New York City in 2017 and continues to develop theater and film projects as a writer and director.
Ayhan Hulagu
Ayhan Hulagu is a New York–based actor and writer. He began his career in Istanbul with Studio Players and founded the US Karagoz Theatre Company in the United States in 2017. His work has toured nearly 40 U.S. states, with performances, workshops, and exhibitions at international festivals and major universities including Princeton, Cornell, UC Berkeley, MIT, Harvard and Stanford. Hulagu has adapted works such as Don Quixote, Hamlet, Dede Korkut, and One Thousand and One Nights into traditional Turkish theatre through his own distinctive approach. He has been invited to festivals including the National Puppet Festival, the Chicago Film Festival, and the New York and Hollywood Fringe Festivals, and he became the first artist to bring traditional Turkish theatre to Broadway.
