Kat's Handy Memory Blog: Mediterranean (or Aegean) Shadow Puppets

I've always been interested in puppetry arts and I must have voiced this enough such that a friend who went to Thessoliniki to work on his PhD research

on greek religious iconography 10 years ago returned with 2 articulated colorful shadow puppets made of plastic with very unique styles and personalities that made me think these were particular characters from a certain Greek tradition of story telling. Another clue was the packaging listing their names: XATZLABATHS (below) and ΑΓΝΑΪΑ (right). Both labels had greek words:

ΚΑΡΑΓΚΙΟΖΙΔЄЅ
ΤŏΜΟΛΛΑ

I've been trying to find the origins of these quiet storytellers and I believed they may be characters in the stories of Haridimos Karaghiozi, the well-known Greek shadow puppet tradition which was being kept alive and well by puppeteer story teller Evgenios Spatharis who sadly died after falling down stairs this past May on his way to a performance. He recorded 18 Karaghiozi stories on 78 records long ago. Luckily, another puppet artist Sotiris Haridimos keeps the tradition going in Athens with his Karagiozis Theater on Tripodon Street.

I found this photo of a record on UK's ebay and translation is provided showing same greek word that is on my puppet label with translation "To Miralogi Tou Karagiozi." So my puppets must be the characters of Karagiozi plays, yay, I solved the mystery!

Today I stumbled on the Cegniz Turkish shadow puppets; look how similar they look to the greek ones! It makes sense, Turkey and Greece are close neighbors.

Not sure about their language commonalities. On the webpage for the Cegniz shadow puppets they mention a play about environmental stewardship based on the shamanistic sources of Karagöz! Wow, these 2 traditions are more closely related than I thought, this is getting more interesting!

For the Greeks, Karagiozi is a representation of the struggles of the Greek peoples, especially in reference to Turkish occupation. Wow... . The main character has a hunchback and one arm 3 times longer than the other. He schemes to get things by acting roles of socially important people to gain small things, and the stories are full of historical and societal references that make Greek audiences laugh, purportedly.

In Turkey, Karagöz is the name of the traditional shadow puppetry tradition as well as the name of one of two characters portrayed in the traditional shadow puppet plays. He represents childlike, uneducated morality and common sense; a tactless little man (whereas the other main character Hacivat represents the ideals of the ruling classes during the Ottoman empire and gets irritated at Karagoz for ruining their fun).
In both traditions, this Karagiozi/Karagöz character is an underdog opposed to authority and sultanic powers. And so it seems that a long tradition in Turkey preceded the tradition in Greece for these shadow puppets. It makes sense because the Turkish tradition supposedly started at a contstruction site in 1396 by two guys sick of seeing corruption of ruling classes over the working man... and the Ottoman's began to rule Greece in the 15th Century. When did Karagiozi begin in Greece? This blogger's posting tells that it was in the 19th century (along with a lot of other neat shadow puppet history).