Is Shakspere Shakespeare?

Ege Maltepe is an actress, writer, and director born in Istanbul. She began her theatre career at the age of 14 with legendary theatre artist Ferhan Sensoy at Ortaoyuncular Company. She later developed an international career in New York. After watching one of her monologues, Academy Award–winning director Mike Nichols described her performance as “Excellent.” Her original plays—Variations After Joe (2009), devised through improvisation, Tea for 3 (2012), TITS by Prof. G (2013), and Women of New York (2016)—were staged in New York. She has co-created a distinctive series of theatrical concerts with pianist and composer Emir Gamsız, including Drama in Beethoven, Talking to Schubert, Chopin Time, The Tempest, and Bach’s Riddle, structuring classical music with theatrical performance and storytelling. Maltepe graduated from Bilkent University’s Acting Department and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for postgraduate study in the United States. She trained at The New Actors Workshop in New York—founded by three legends of American theatre/cinema Mike Nichols, George Morrison, and Paul Sills. Her training spans a wide range of performance techniques, with a particular focus on Viola Spolin’s improvisation method. In 2009, she founded Spolin-ist, introducing Spolin’s theatre games approach to Turkiye, and translated and translated Improvisation for the Theater into Turkish. As an author, her first children’s novel The Secret in the Clay Pot is published in 2024.

Emir Gamsız is a Turkish pianist, composer, writer, and interdisciplinary artist with one of the most unconventional paths in classical music. A former professional basketball player in the Turkish Basketball League, he began playing the piano at 20. Within a year, he was admitted—at an unprecedented age—to the piano department of Istanbul University State Conservatory, later receiving the Lions Club’s Young Musician of the Year award. Since then, he has appeared across Europe, the United States, and Turkiye. In 2008, he became the first Turkish pianist to perform J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations in Türkiye. He has also collaborated with leading musicians including Chen Halevi, Natalie Clein, Marina Chiche, Ittai Shapira, and Belcea Quartet. He has produced radio programmes, wrote for Andante and Milliyet, and created long-running children’s productions, including The Tempest and Bach’s Riddle. His compositional work, encouraged by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer David Del Tredici at City College of New York, led to his debut album Alla Turca Around the World (2013). During 11 years in New York, he curated concert series at Caffe Vivaldi and launched film projects Gamsız is the creator of the “Chatty Pianist” concept which has been presented at venues including Lincoln Center, Süreyya Opera House and across international festivals. Chatty Pianist is an original form of stage performance that combines sociological approach to stories unfolded through a piano recital.