About

İrem Seçil Reel Şen, a compelling theatre artist/scholar and an activist for Turkish studies, offers her actors, collaborator artists, and students a challenging yet compassionate experience to further their critical engagement with theatre and performance. Embracing “the ignorant master” model in her directing and teaching, she hopes to de-learn the canonical truths and explore, subvert, and alter them through the very same process. With this philosophy, she values one-on-one contact in her daily and professional encounters and celebrates every rehearsal/lesson/meeting as a chance to explore the creative resource as a team with her collaborators.

Her educational background in diverse disciplines helped her hone analytical and social skills simultaneously, allowing her to appreciate opportunities different ways of engagement/thinking present. Her business education helped her to approach issues with an opportunistic eye and to remain at a critical distance with an observant eye; whereas her performance and teaching experiences furthered her social skills and her desire to initiate change from, within, and for the individual. Her many multi-cultural experiences have strengthened her ability to effectively energize, inspire, and entertain, allowing her to communicate and build relationships with diverse individuals and effectively work with people regardless of their culture, age, or profession. Her interaction with individuals from different backgrounds concreted her belief in the necessity of hearing multiple voices and creating venues of communications among them. She persistently engages people from different backgrounds in her professional and personal environments, creating chance for interdisciplinary engagements. While appreciated for her focused and results oriented attitude, she strives to achieve a healthy balance in her personal and professional life. Her employees, colleagues, family, and friends recognize her as a helpful, loyal, and energetic individual who can take the initiative and make a contribution with business colleagues and friends alike.

Seçil is expected to complete her M.A. in Theatre Studies at Florida State University in 2012. She desires to enhance her artistic engagement through working in a professional theatre/performance company. She adapts quickly to new and diverse environments, languages, and cultures, and enjoys the challenge such opportunities present. As a responsible citizen of the world, Seçil desires to work in an environment where she can utilize her knowledge and skills to improve the well being of the communities she resides in, inspiring individuals one by one to be socially responsible.

Seçil worked as the producer-director for the World Premiere of Özen Yula’s play Ambling Riders that she received artist fellowships from the Turkish Ministry of Culture and the Turkish Culture Foundation. She also served as the English translator for the original Turkish script. She now works on the translation of Şems!.. Unutma!.., another play of Özen Yula, through which she theorizes the interpenetration of nationalism and secularism, and how theatre/performance intervenes with these two hegemonic discourses. Her particular interests of study are in modern Turkish theatre, Arabic theatre, translation, and adaptation. She hopes to expand her experience in directing, artistic direction, and dramaturgy in an environment where differences arising from nationalities and/or cultures create a conversation among them.

This website is among the many changing faces/facets of her – a continuous work in progress.