One day, they meet him on the street and deceive him into returning to their house where they subsequently beat him, strip him of his clothes and throw him onto the street naked. The story starts with Çelebi, a rich educated man, fleecing the ladies Salkim İnci and Bloody Nigar of a large part of their wealth, and then disappearing. Nigar you’ll remember is a rather flirtatious woman as well as being somewhat quarrelsome. The conclusion always involves a short argument between Karagöz and Hacivat, with Hacivat finally yelling that Karagöz has ruined everything and Karagöz replies with, ‘May my transgressions be forgiven.’Ī classic tale of the bawdier variety is ‘Bloody Nigar’. Then follows a dialogue between the two main protagonists, Karagoz and Hacivat (muhavere).Then head long into the main body of the story (fasıl) followed by the conclusion (bitiş). Karagöz enters from the opposite side of the stage. The introduction, or mukaddime, during which Hacivat sings, recites a prayer, and indicates that he is looking for his friend Karagöz, whom he beckons to the scene with a speech that always ends “Yar bana bir eğlence” (‘Oh, for some amusement’). There are about thirty plays that are accepted as the classical Karagöz repertoire, and later more plays were added, but the structure remains the same. Other characters in these plays include the drunkard Tuzsuz Deli Bekir, the long-necked Uzun Efe, the opium addict Kanbur Tiryaki, an eccentric dwarf, Altı Kariş Beberuhi, the half-wit Denyo, the spendthrift Civan, and Bloody Nigâr, a rather flirtatious woman. They were so sorely missed that they were immortalized as the shadow puppets that entertained the Ottoman Empire for centuries. Angered by the slow progress of the mosque the ruler at the time ordered their execution. Their practical jokes and wisecracking banter distracted the other workers, slowing down the construction. They were construction workers on a mosque in Bursa sometime in the mid-1300s and were reknowned for their clowning and tomfoolery. The story goes that Karagöz and Hacivat were actual people. Karagöz can be lewd, deceitful and even violent whilst Hacivat, by contrast, is an educated gentlemen, more refined in his manner, who resolutely tries to instil a sense of decorum into the proceedings. Hacivat attempts to temper the extravagances of Karagöz and his get rich quick schemes, all of which result in failure. Karagoz is a peasant, reperesentative of the people, who normally wins the day with his boorish wit, outsmarting his more urbane sidekick Hacivat. The two main characters are Karagöz and Hacivat.
Karagöz is part of a rich Turkish strorytelling tradition, which before the advent of radio and television was one of the most popular forms of entertainment and survives today in a toned down version for kids.
We were in Canakkale in the north west of Turkey recently doing shows for school children, and at one of the schools we happened across a performance by some Turkish shadow puppeteers – known in Turkey as Karagöz.
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