FOUR TRADITIONS OF THEATRE IN TURKEY*

Theatrical art in Turkey is currently believed to have developed from the same religious, moral and educational urge to imitate human actions that accompanied its growth in other countries, particularly in ancient Greece. The puppet shadow play, which involves two-dimensional puppets (figures) casting its shadow on a two-dimensional area of screen, had an important place in Turkey as well as throughout the larger area of the Ottoman Empire. To understand its place let us glance at four main traditions of theatre in Turkey. These are the “folk theatre tradition”, the “popular theatre tradition – shadow play (karagoz), storyteller”, the “court theatre tradition”, and the “western theatre tradition”. In order to understand the significance of Turkish puppets shadow play, these deserve special brief study.

1.The Folk Theatre Tradition.
The Turkish peasantry, which constitutes about three quarters of the whole population, is the most homogeneous and articulate element of the nation, and has throughout many centuries, retained its own peculiar character. The isolation of Turkish villages has caused in their unique forms, of traditional peasant dances, puppet shows and puppets shadow play. During public festivals, a type of crude drama sometimes accompanies the singing, dancing, mime and shadow plays. This is most likely a legacy from ancient religious rites, handed down from generation to generation. Maybe it originated in the shamanistic rituals of the Ural-Altaic region, which was the birthplace of the Turkish people, or perhaps it was part of the folklore of the Phrygian or Hittite civilizations of Anatolia. It is also through that many of the Anatolian peasant plays originated from festivals honoring such gods as Dionysus, Attis and Osiris, or from the Egyptian mysteries celebrated in Eleusis and other places. These dramas frequently display symbolic elements like puppets shadow play.
Although today these plays are, almost without exception, no more than mere diversions, they frequently display symbolic elements. Because of gradual additions, innovations and corruptions the centuries, and augmentations or reductions in the cast of characters, no standard versions of these plays exist.

There are two chief incidents upon which all the folk dramas are based. The first is deadly battle, in which one of the combaants is kiled and subsequently restored to life, either with the help of a doctor or through magic. This may very well be a survival of such vegetation cults as the festival of Dionysus, where in the god of vegetation was killed, or it may derive from the days when an aged king was slain in order to give new life to the soil. There is no question that this theme is a dramatized symbol of the waning year and its rebirth as the new one.

The first sequence, frequently mimed, shows a battle between groups or individuals. This is a survival of ancient rites in which opponents comforted each other in such symbolic struggles as that between life and death, light and darkness, summer and winter, the waning and the new year, father and son, or the old king and the young. Anatolian peasant dramas often include Arab, a black-faced individual, dressed in a black goat or sheepskin, who represents night or winter. His opponent, in emphatic contrast, is usually white-bearded and wears a white goat or sheepskin.

The procession or quest sequence shows men either wearing animal skins, or with blackened faces, moving from house to house. The play that follows may take place inside or in front of one of the houses, and sometimes includes dancing and singing. Nearly all of them display such common features as blackened faces, following the tradition of Greek mysteries where the actors covered their faces with soot. Event the actors roles are sometimes transferred to people in animal disguises.

Every region in Turkey, every village even has its own dance. In all, these number around fifteen hundred, and some are in the nature of pantomime. The five general categories in which these may be placed are: the dramatization of animal actions; the everyday routine of village life; the exaltation of nature; and courtship. Even today these Turkish folk dramas, puppet performances, puppets shadow play and dances contain a vast source of artistic energy, which must be exploited if Turkey is to build up a strong national theatrical tradition.

2.The Popular Theater Tradition (Meddah and puppet shadow play Karagoz Hacivat)
The Turkish theater developed in two distinct geographical areas: in old Istanbul and other cities, and in the villages popular theater was a pastime of the urban middle class. It was presented to the public by three classes of professional performers: live actors; story tellers (Meddah) and puppeteers ( both puppet shadow play and marionette or puppets – Turkish mean is Kukla). Its characteristic traits were imitation and mimicry of dialectic peculiarities, and imitation of animals by stock characters called taklit, easily recognized by the audience because of their standard costumes and signature tunes and dances. The comedian, puppet shadow play master , puppeteer and storyteller memorized certain stock phrases some in rhymed couplets and enacted scenes from everyday life, using the colorful idiom of their time. They relied very title on properties and hardly at all on scenery . Men played woman’s parts. Performances were given, not in special buildings set apart for the purpose, but whatever they could be accommodated- in public squares, at national and religious festivals, at weddings , circumcision ceremony (Turkish mean is Sünnet) and fairs, in the yards of inns, in coffee houses, in taverns and private residences. Everything was done to music: wrestling matches were carried on to musical accompaniment, conjurers performed to the sound of the tambourine. The plays had little or no action, depending for laughs on lively slapstick and on monologues or dialogues involving puns, ready responses, crude practical jokes, double meanings, misunderstandings, and interpolated quips. There were clearly formulated rules of intonation. Performances were often include with songs or dances, or both.

Virtually nothing is known of popular theater under the Anatolian Turks between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. The Byzantine Emperor Manual Palaeologos II records his impression of his visit to Sultan Beyazit’s court sometime before 1407 and mentions companies of musicians, singers, dancers and actors. A very early description of a Turkish dramatic performance may be found in the epic prose poem. The Alexiad of Anna Comnena, the eldest daughter of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus, who describes in the following words how the actors at the Seljuk court ridiculed her father who was suffering from gout: “Never before had the Emperor suffered so severely from that pain… and the Emperor’s suffering in his feet, and the trouble in his feet, become the subject of comedies. First they would impersonate the Emperor, then they would depict the Emperor himself lying on a couch, and make play of it. These puerile games aroused much laughter among the barbarians.”

The description gives an idea of some manifestations of the dramatic instinct of the Seljuk Turks in the twelfth century. Prior to ortaoyunu, which is the Turkish commedia dell’arte, traces of Turkish dramatic art could be founding farces, impromptu productions based on the humorous possibilities of rudimentary situations, characters and costumes. Animal mimicry played an important part in these productions, the deer being a principal character. There were also occasional farces performed in the streets, whenever there was an audience or onlookers ready to take part. These were often pre-arranged comic situations, worked out in front of shops and houses largely through improvisations with practical jokes inserted on the spur of the moment. Players, impersonating officials such as watch-men tax collectors and treasure hunters, teased shopkeepers with practical jokes to obtain money from them.

As time went on all these coarse and crude farces, whether Kol oyunu (company plays), or Meydan oyunu (plays in the round), or Taklit oyunu (mimicry plays), became associated with the Ortaoyunu. Before the influence of the European theater, a raised platform was never used as a stage by these performers. The dancing girls and boys were much like actors and actresses performing for the amusement of the onlookers. They came from different guilds and companies called kol or cemaat. Anyone who has ever seen the shadow play, Karagoz will have noted the similarity between its characters its comic elements, its atmosphere, and those of the Ortaoyunu.

The only difference is that one medium uses puppets and the other live actors. Under western influence, the rich tradition of Ortaoyunu later fell into decay and was eventually transformed into a different kind of improvised theater called Tuluat. Because of its from of expression and the special nature of its rapport with the audience, Ortaoyunu can be called presentational or non-illusionists. The actor does not lose his identity as an actor and shows his awareness of his to the audience. The audience does not regard him as pretending to be a real person but as an actor. The acting area is not separated from the audience, there is no line between them, and no transparent fourth wall. The play is performed with hardly any scenery at all in a circle where the audience surrounds the actors. The principal comic character occasionally violates the traditional dramatic conventions. Ortaoyunu performances (like the shadow theater and storytelling) have no plots in the Aristotelian sense. They have, to use the current terminology, “open from”. They are loose. Episodic structures which do not require the compulsive attention of the audiences. Each episode is independent; consequently, in different performances, the episodes can be interchanged, added to or subtracted from, according to the audience’s reactions or the puppeteer’s or actor’s decision, without upsetting the general course of the action. Surviving titles and scenario show resemblances and close parallels between Karagoz and Ortaoyunu plots.

The second from of the popular theater tradition is the dramatic story told by a single speaker called the Meddah (literally, praise-giver or panegyrist), a clever impersonator who “does many characters with appropriate gestures, voice modulations and accents.

The third from of the popular theater is puppetry, including both shadow puppet theater (Karagoz) which constitutes the subject of this present site, and puppet and marionette theater.

3.The Court Theatre Tradition

Unlike most Asiatic countries, Turkey has no individualized and distinctive court theater tradition. Until the Westernized period, court theater simply imitated popular theater. The customary entertainers attendant upon medieval rulers allover Anatolian had, of course been active. The courts were the patrons of companies, dancers, actors, storytellers, clowns, puppet masters and conjurers. They would perform only for the aristocracy of the palace, hence they were more refined and literary. But the court sustained theatrical entertainment outside the palace as well. The birth of a new or his circumcision, a court marriage, the accession of a new ruler, triumph in a war, departure for a new conquest, arrival of a welcome foreign ambassador or guest, provided occasions for public festivities sometimes lasting as long as forty days and night. These served the double purpose of amusing the courtiers and the people, and impressing the world at large by a display of magnificence. The festivities included not only processions, illuminations , fireworks, equestrian games and hunting, but also dancing, music, poetic recitations, and performances by jugglers, mountebanks and buffoons. Pageants were given on gaudy wagons or on ordinary carts fitted with large-canopied platforms, each carrying a guild group performing scenes appropriate touts trade or representing a characteristic setting. The artistic power of which the Turks gave proof on such occasions was attained only by means of that free intercourse between all classes that formed the basic of Turkish society. With the western influences at the beginning of 19th century, the Sultans started building theatres in their palaces. Sultan Abdulmecit built a theatre in the neighbourhood of the Dolmabahce Palace in 1858, and Abdulhamit built a theatre in 1889 in his Yildiz Palace. This latter building has survived. In these, theatrical and operatic performances were given, employing professional or amateur players. In 1909, Abdulhamit was dethroned and the palace theater was abandoned after only a few performance.

4.The Western Theater Tradition

The development of Turkish western tradition is fairly recent, and can be conveniently divided into three periods, which are phases not only determined by theatrical developments, but also by political and constitutional changes: (a) The first, from 1839 to 1908 can be called the Tanzimat and Istibdat Period, that is the “Reorganization”; (b) The second is from 1908 to 1923, the period of the revolution of 1908 and (c) The third is from 1923 to the present day and can be called the Republican period.

 

The shadow theatre, which involves two-dimensional figures casting their shadows on a screen, had important place in Turkey as well as throughout the larger area of the Ottoman Empire. The Turks, before they came to know shadow theatre in the sixteenth century, had enjoyed a long-standing established puppet tradition. There is virtually no kind of puppet show that Turkey has not tried. Puppet tradition came from Central Asia, but shadow theatre did not. Central Asia and Persia do not have shadow theatre. It was borrowed from Egypt in the sixteenth century. One question, however, remains and that is the origin of the Egyptian shadow theatre. There seems-little doubt that the shadow theatre was borrowed from Java by the Arabs. Arab trading and raiding expeditions kept them in continuous contact with Java. Now the question as to whether there was any indirect influence via Egypt of the Javanese on the Turkish shadow theatre is difficult to answer; yet there are several points in common between Turkish and Javanese shadow theatres. Turkish shadow theatre appears to be the product of a historical process whereby the Mameluke-derived shadow play technique was taken over by the Turks from a technical point of view only. In addition, it can be assumed that the Turkish shadow theatre borrowed movements, postures, and costumes of the Ottoman shadow theatre along with human actors such as Ottoman jesters and grotesque dancers, both of which had been in existence long before the advent of shadow theatre.

We do not know what early karagoz figures looked like as the oldest puppets extant today are no more than one hundred years old. However we have a rich source reference in the Ottoman miniatures of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These depict jesters and grotesque dancers, which conform to the style of karagoz figures not only in their costumes and headgear but also in their characteristic postures. Whether it was through the Egyptians or others that Turkey got Karagoz, all might have bequeathed a slight influence in their way. However, in essence, Karagoz is a rich cross section of Turkish culture, namely, of poetry, miniature painting music, folk customs, and oral tradition. So then, all these elements merged and fused in the early preparatory years of the sixteenth century to result in what is today known as Karagoz. By the seventeenth century, Karagoz was wholly identified. The name of Karagoz, as well as of kukla which in Turkish means a -puppet-, appeared for the first time in the seventeenth century.

Technique of Puppet Theatre Karagoz

 

Regarding presentation, the Karagoz puppet theatre stage is separated from the audience by a frame holding a sheet of any white translucent material but preferably fine Egyptian cotton. It is mounted like a painters canvas, stretched taut on a frame. The size of the screen in the past was 2 m x 2.5 m; in more recent times it was reduced to 1 m x 1.60 m. The operator stands behind the screen, holding the puppets against it and using an olive-oil lamp as a light source from behind. An oil lamp is preferable as it throws a good shadow and makes the characters flicker, this giving them a more lifelike appearance. The light is fixed behind and just below the screen. The light distance is determined by the need and curtain on which the shadow is to be thrown. The screen diffuses the light, and the light shines through the multicoloured transparent material, making the figures look like stained glass. The puppeteer holds the puppet close against the screen with rods held horizontally and stretched at right angles from the puppet. With horizontal rods held at right angles to the screen there is far less shadow on the screen, but control is limited. The Turkish puppets are worked by horizontal rods, unlike the Javanese and other Southeastern shadow puppets which are moved and supported by vertical rods. However, there are two devices which provide alternatives to the usual horizontal rods employed in Turkish shadow show. One is hayal agaci -puppet-tree-. The operator can manipulate only two figures at a time; so when there is a demand for more than two figures on stage, he uses this device. The puppet-tree is a Y-shaped rod. Y-shaped rods are stuck into the holes on the ledge at the bottom of the screen so that they stand vertically. The horizontal rods of the figures are placed in the cleft of these rods, so that when the puppeteer presses the ends of the horizontal rods against the screen with his chest or stomach, these figures stand still and do not move. Through this device a crowd scene can be easily accomplished. The second device is called by the shadow puppeteer firdondu, a -swivel-, which is designed to overcome a disadvantage presented by the horizontal rods- that is, the puppets can not be turned round to face the other way. This device is similar to that used in the Chinese shadow play. It is simply a rod wire fixed in a wooden handle, the curved end of which is inserted in small leather socket on the outer edge and at the back, in a sort of hinge attached to the figure. The puppeteer can give it a quick flip in order to make the figure face in the opposite direction. There are a few Turkish shadow puppet theatre figures fitted with this device in the Hamburg and Topkapi Palace collections, showing that it has been known by the Turks for some time. Puppets are operated on the plane of action and the length of the control rods can be adjusted to the socket of the puppets, allowing the puppets to work in the upper areas without the shadow of the operator’s hands being visible. Along the bottom edge at the back of the screen is a batten to act as a rest for the legs of puppets. Underneath this there is a horizontal ledge to put the oil lamps on. This ledge also has some holes on its surface to stick the supporting rods, the puppet-trees.

The figures are flat, clean-cut silhouettes in colour. Animal skin is used in the making of the puppets, especially that of the camel. The skin is well rubbed and soaked in a solution containing bran to remove its oil properties and to make it softer. The skin is dried under the sun during the months of July and August. It is smoothed out and treated until it is almost transparent, and it is well scraped with a piece of broken glass to remove hairs. Finally it is rubbed and polished. The outline is drawn by applying a mould or a pattern and the lines cut out with a small curved knife called nevregan. The cut-out is then stained with translucent vegetable dyes of tender blue, deep purple, leaf green, olive green, red crimson, terracotta, brown and yellow. Jointing is done with a piece of gut threaded through each of the two pieces at the point of overlap and then knotted on both sides. The action of the figures dictates their shapes. Each of them has a hole somewhere in the upper part of the body, which is reinforced by a double leather piece like a socket into which the control rod may be snugly inserted from either side. A second rod gives Karagoz his distinctive action. A good number of Turkish puppets have an articulation between head and body, which is usually the only articulation, the rest of the body below the neck being in one piece. In such puppets, the manipulation-rod hole is in the neck. In this way a figure can do a complete somersault with a twist of the rod. Apart from this, Karagoz,s arm is made up of two joints, and his headgear is attached by a loose joint at the back of the head; so with a quick flick of the puppeteers wrist, the headgear can fall back to expose Karagoz,s bald head. Karagoz is not the only figure that is manipulated by two rods. The socket of the rod is carefully placed so that the puppet will balance properly. Figures can thus make sweeping bows to the ground or incline their bodies backward to gaze at the sky.

The achieve magical transformation, the shadow puppet theatre uses various devices. For instance, there is a puppet with two heads, one of which is concealed behind the body. When the action calls for a figure’s head to change into a donkey’s head, by turning the rod in one complete revelation, the concealed donkey,s head takes the place of the actual head, which in turn is hidden behind the body. However, in order to change a character’s costume or strip, two separate representations of the same figure are used. Puppets range in size from 24 centimeters to over 35 centimeters in height. An average size is about 30 centimeters (12 inches). The smallest figure is a dwarf, approximately 20 centimeters in height, while the tallest is Baba Himmet, a little over 57 centimeters