Oral Composition and the Karaghiozis Performance

Abstract

The Karaghiozis performance – a shadow puppet form introduced to Greece by the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries by its Ottoman conquerors – became hellenized over the century following Greece's liberation from the Turks in 1821 to develop into a form significantly different from its prototype in its plots, stock characters, structure, and themes. A performance which attracted widely-ranging popular support, Karaghiozis took on until recently greater importance than live theatre in Greece both as a cultural reflection and as a viable dramatic medium. Traditionally, the performance opens with a prologue which functions very much like a curtain-raiser. The Greek prologue differs from that of its Turkish forerunner in which the hunchback fool hero's cohort, Haciavad, recites a poem, sings a song, and offers prayers. In the Greek performance, a modern prologue typically includes some combination of the following scenes: Karaghiozis' opening dance, his marching and quizzing of his sons, a quarrel between the rustic Barba George and the palace guard Veligekas, an announcement by Karaghiozis and his sons of the evening's performance, and an extended stock scene of some type (the supposed death and resurrection of Karaghiozis, for example).