Meral Polat

(Turkey, 1982) is an actress, singer and theatre artist. She has frequently appeared on Dutch stages and television and in Dutch films; she received the 2008 Guido de Moor Prize for her role in the theatre production Hollandse spoor (Dutch Rails). She performed with her own band, Meral's Harem, in the 2015-16 production Ochtendzee (Morning Sea) and appeared in the musical Lost Tango in 2019. After the first Corona-lockdown in 2020, she toured the Netherlands with musicians Chris Doyle and Frank Rosaly as the Meral Polat Trio with Merals Zomer (Meral's Summer): sentimenal ballads of woe, love songs full of longing, and sexy up-tempo numbers in Turkish and Kurdish. On their debut album Ez Kî Me (Who Am I), released in December 2022, Meral performs her own texts as well as poems written by her father, Ali Ihsan Polat.