Kenan Işık

Kenan Işık — Biography

Kenan Işık reached the widest audience as the host of the quiz show Kim Milyoner Olmak İster?, but his real profession was the theatre. He worked on stage as actor, director, playwright and administrator, and also wrote for newspapers. After a fall on 21 March 2014 he lived for ten years in a coma, and he died in Istanbul on 29 July 2024 at the age of 76.

He began in amateur theatre at the Malatya Halkevi and turned professional at Ankara's Meydan Sahnesi while still at high school. After studying public administration at Gazi University he became a State Theatres artist in 1972 and retired from there in 2000. His staging of İvan İvanoviç Var Mıydı, Yok Muydu? won the Theatre Critics Association's Play of the Year award in 1992, and his own plays Bebek Uykusu and Olmayan Kadın earned the Ministry of Culture's Best Playwright Award. From 1996 to 2000 he was general artistic director of the Istanbul City Theatres, and from 2007 to 2012 he served as art adviser to the mayor of Istanbul.

Journalism and screen work ran alongside the theatre: he worked at Resmi Gazete, Yeni Yüzyıl, Yeni Binyıl and Akşam, and presented Star Haber in 2005. On screen he appeared in Dadı, Yeşil Işık, Sayın Bakanım and Belalı Baldız. He was given the Yıldırım Önal Memorial Award at the Antalya Film Festival in 2016, and in 2025 an amphitheatre at Malatya Turgut Özal University was named after him.