PUPPET masters .

A barefoot, ragged hunchback with black beady eyes is contemplating a way to make some easy money. Spotting an olive seller, he purchases some of his wares. He then proceeds to sell the olives – at half the price he paid for them. When asked how he could expect to make a profit this way, the hunchback replies, don’t worry, I’ll make it up on the volume.

So goes one of the classic stories of Karagiozis, the main protagonist in Greek shadow theater. Derived from a similar Turkish theater called Karagöz, the advent of Karagiozis as a truly Greek cultural phenomenon didn’t occur until the end of the 19th century when a psalmodist at St. Andrews church in Patras named Dimitrios Sardounis, AKA Mimaros, changed the form from a bawdy, sexually explicit practice to one that was family-friendly.

Always set in the days of the Otto-man Empire, with the action taking place between Karagiozis’ dilapidated cottage and the Sultan’s palace, the storyline often involves either Karagiozis trying to help the Sultan to make money, or else trying to cheat him out of it. There are many other characters, such as Hadjiavatis, Karagiozis friend and sidekick, and Barba Yorgos, a rube from the mountains who, while acknowledging the inherent crookedness of Karagiozis, none-theless often assists him.

The puppets, traditionally made from camel skin, were attached to a stick. All the puppets had moveable torsos; the more important characters also often had moveable limbs.

To present a story, the puppeteer placed a white cloth between the audience and his puppets and then illuminated the cloth from behind with candles or lamps. The audience would then see the puppets as a series of silhouettes. Perhaps the plays weren’t as colorful as TV, but they were a lot more fun. e