Karagiozis Shadow Theatre

Karagiozis arrived in Greece from the Ottoman shadow-puppet tradition and was reworked through the nineteenth century into something specifically Greek: a hunchbacked, barefoot, permanently hungry man living in a shack beside a pasha's palace, who lies, schemes and fails his way through each story. The puppets are flat, jointed figures of leather or card held on rods against a lit cloth screen, and one performer, the karagiozopaichtis, voices every character. The supporting cast is a gallery of regional types, each with an accent and a stock temperament. Popular into the 1950s and then displaced by cinema and television, it survives through a few families of players, summer performances in squares and municipal theatres, and a museum in Maroussi.

Highlights

• The lit screen - a cloth backdrop with puppets pressed against it.
• The single performer - one player voicing every character live.
• The regional types - stock characters with distinct accents and manners.
• The puppets - jointed leather and card figures on rods.

When to go

Summer, when open-air performances run in squares and municipal theatres across the country, often free or cheap and aimed partly at children. Winter performances are rarer and mostly in Athens.

What to expect

Performances are entirely in Greek and depend heavily on wordplay, accents and topical jokes, so much is lost without the language. Shows are often pitched at children in their modern form. Schedules are announced locally and at short notice.

Nearby

The Spathario Museum of Shadow Theatre in Maroussi, Athens, holds puppets, screens and archives.