Karagoz Shadow Theatre in Bursa

Karagoz is a shadow play built around two men who never agree: Karagoz, blunt, broke and quick with his hands, and Hacivat, educated and pleased with himself. The figures are cut from camel hide scraped thin enough to pass light, coloured, hinged at the joints and worked on horizontal rods against a stretched white cloth lit from behind, with a single puppeteer voicing every character and imitating the accents of a whole neighbourhood. Bursa has claimed the tradition since a local legend placed the two men here as workmen on a mosque site. Performances belonged to Ramadan evenings and coffeehouses; the city keeps a museum of figures and a schedule of shows.

What you actually see

• The figures - camel hide scraped translucent, coloured and hinged at the joints.
• The screen - a lit cloth with the puppeteer working the rods from behind it.
• The Karagoz Museum - old figures, screens and puppeteers' equipment collected in one place.
• Ramadan evenings - the traditional season for shows, still the busiest schedule.

When to go

Performances are most frequent through Ramadan and around Bursa's puppet festival; outside those the museum runs shows on a weekly schedule that shifts with the season. Ask at the museum for current times rather than trusting old listings. Evening shows suit children, but the humour was written for adults.

Honest expectations

The comedy is verbal, dense with puns and dialect jokes, and almost none of it survives translation, so without Turkish you are watching shapes move. Shows are short, often twenty to forty minutes. The museum is small and away from the centre. Some tourist-facing performances are shortened demonstrations rather than a full play.

Nearby

Bursa's tiled mosques and tombs, the covered bazaar and the cable car station for Uludag.