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Historical Source Material for the Karagkiozis Performance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
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Karagkiozis, or Greek shadow puppet theatre, is a theatrical form that reflects nineteenth-century Greek oral culture. It utilizes a variety of national and regional costumes, dialects, and manners. Having developed in Greece during the period of that nation's modern history, it expresses the continuity of Greek culture and carries its themes, scenes of daily life, and characters. It retains, moreover, vestiges, or perhaps more accurately resurgences, of the pagan as well as the Christian past. Folk characters and types from folk plays and tales – the quack doctor, old man, old woman, devil Jew, Vlach, Moor, Gypsy, swaggering soldier, old rustic, jesting servant, trickster, parasite, stuttering child, ogre, dragon, bald-chin, and the great beauty – are its types as well. Popular folk dances, regional songs, and heroic poetry and ballads appear throughout Karagkiozis performances.
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1. On the history of Turkish Karagoz see Siyavusgil, Sabri Esat, Karagoz (Istanbul: Milli Egitim Basimovi, 1951)Google Scholar; Metin, And, A History of Theatre and Popular Entertainment in Turkey (Ankara: Forum Yayinlari, 1963)Google Scholar; And, Karagoz (Ankara: Dost Yayinlari, 1975)Google Scholar; Basgoz, Ilhan, ‘Earlier References to Koukla and Karagoz’, Turcica (1972), pp. 9–21Google Scholar; Bombaci, Alessio, ‘On Ancient Turkish Dramatic Performances’, Aspects of Altaic Civilization (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1963), XXIII, 87–117Google Scholar; Halman, Talat Sail, ‘Comic Spirit in the Turkish Theatre’, The Theatre Annual, 31 (1975), pp. 16–42Google Scholar; Landau, Jacob, Studies in Arab Theatre and Cinema (Phila.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1956)Google Scholar; Martinovitch, Nicholas M., The Turkish Theatre (New York: Theatre Arts, Inc., 1933)Google Scholar; Sevengil, Refik Ahmet, Sur l'ancienneté de l'art dramatique turc (Istanbul: Direction Generale de la Presse, 1949).Google Scholar
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21. Ibid., p. 317.
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23. Fare, 9 06 1896, p. 2Google Scholar, in Kokkinis, , footnote n, p. 15.Google Scholar See, on nineteenth-century theatre in Greece, Myrsiades, Linda S., ‘The Struggle for Greek Theatre in Post-Liberation Greece’, Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, 7 (1980), pp. 33–51.Google Scholar
24. Fare, 23 06 1896, p. 3Google Scholar, in Kokkinis, , footnote 11, p. 16.Google Scholar
25. Filaretos, , Euvia, 1 11 1879, p. 4Google Scholar, in Kokkinis, , p. 6.Google Scholar
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27. Fotiadhis, , p. 91.Google Scholar
28. The mixing of upper and lower class patrons in the Karagkiozis audience clearly disturbed those with cultural pretensions. Karagkiozis' rival, the Fasoulis and Periklitos performance (similar to Punch and Judy), did not, however, face the same degree of enmity with which the ‘Turkish screen’ was greeted. Having appeared on the Greek stage sometime before 1870, Fasoulis was introduced into Athens, the author Bambis Anninos reports, a few years before 1888 by an itinerant promoter from Kerkyra. Fasoulis was, unlike Karagkiozis, more completely a lower-class entertainment. When, for example, a summer theatre, expensively fitted to draw the public in 1870, was suddenly converted to a Fasoulis performance and its audience became so mixed that the ‘kids couldn't be separated from the sheep’, as Tsokopoulos reports, the common class simply drove out the upper classes to leave an audience exclusively of ‘friends of secular theatre’. It is true that one author in 1890 (see Fotiadhis, p. 91) linked the Fasoulis show to Karagkiozis when prohibitions were raised against ‘theatridhia’, and that Estia, 26 07 1894Google Scholar (see, as quoted in Fotiadhis, p. 336) refers to officials forbidding a Fasoulis performance to avoid complaints of favouritism when a Karagkiozis performance is forced to close. But, as Anninos makes clear, in the popular mind the two bore no relation to each other on one point: in spite of having cleared the way for such a performance as Fasoulis, Karagkiozis was clearly recognized as Ottoman in its origins, while Fasoulis was known as born of the Neapolitan Pulchinello. For a comparison of Karagkiozis to other theatrical entertainments in the late nineteenth century – as well as for a useful extension of this paper to the end of the nineteenth century – see Hatzipantazis, , p. 69 ff.Google Scholar
29. Kokkinis, , pp. 10–11.Google Scholar
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32. See Giulio Caimi whose interviews with players form the basis of his work Karaghiozi ou la com-édie grecque dans l'âme du théâtre d'ombres (Athens: Hellenikes Technes, 1935)Google Scholar; subsequent publications by players themselves include Spathars, Sotiris, Apomnimoneumata ke i tehni tou Karagkiozi (Athens: Perg-hamos, 1960)Google Scholar; Mihopoulos, Panayiotis, ‘O Karagkiozis arghopetheni’, Rizospastis, 30 11 1974Google Scholar; Haridhimos, Hristos, ‘Ezisa me ton Karagkiozi’, Theatro, No. 10 (07–08. 1963), pp. 55–8Google Scholar; Mollas, Antonios, ‘O Karagkiozis’, To Vima, 4 01 1949Google Scholar; Mollas, , ‘Isaghoghi’, I Istoria ke i tehni tou Karagkiozi, by Caimi, Giulio (Athens: Kyklos, 1937)Google Scholar; Mollas, , ‘O Karagkiozis’, Theatro, No. 10 (07–08 1963), p. 62.Google Scholar For autobiographical tapes collected from twenty-one players in 1969, see the Milman Parry Collection, Center for the Study of Oral Literature, Harvard University. Fotiadhis has included materials from interviews in his 0 Karagkiozis, pp. 211–62.Google Scholar See also, Vernardhos, Sokratis, Me ion Sotiri Spathari (Athens: Rodhaki, 1975)Google Scholar; Spiliadhis, Veatrikis, ‘O Mihopoulos mila yia tin tehni tou’, Epi-theorisi Tehnis, 22, No. 128 (08 1965), pp. 94–7.Google Scholar
33. Yior-ghos, , in Kokkinis, , p. 11.Google Scholar
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