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 shadow theatre , which involves two-dimensional 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”, the “court theatre tradition”, and the “western theatre tradition”. In order to understand the significance of Turkish shadow theatre, 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 homogenous and articulate element of the nation, and has throughout many centruies, retained its own peculiar character. The isolation of Turkish villages has caused the preservation, in their unique forms, of traditional peasant dances, puppet shows and plays. During public festivals, a type of crude drama sometimes accompanies the singing, dancing an mime. 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 throught that many of the Anatolian peasant plays originated from festivals honoring such gods as Dionysios, Attis and Osiris, or from the Egyptian mysteries celebrated in Eleusis and other places. These dramas frequently display symbolic elements.
 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 combatants is killed 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 Dionysios, 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 rebith as the new one.
 The second incident concerns the abduction of a girl and her eventual return to a grieving mother, relatives and friends. This is undoubtedly an adaptation of the tale of Persephone’s abduction by Pluto, and her subsequent reunion with her mother, Demeter. This symbolizes the annual vegetation cycle, or death followed by life, as was enacted at Eleusis.
 In these folk dramas there is general lamentation by the villagers at the death of the combatant, or the abduction of the girl, followed by rejoicing at the former’s resurrection or the latter’s return. Three main sequences usually seen within these elaborate seasonal ceremonies are: (a) The battle or contest; (b) a proccession or quest; (c) the drama itself, enacted by impersonation and animal mimicry.
 The first sequence, frequently mimed, shows a battle between groups or individuals. This is a survival of ancient phallic rites in which opponents conforted 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. Other shared characteristic, which suggest the ancient rites of Dionysios, are the use of animal masks the wearing of fox tails, goatskins or sheepskins; phallus processions enlivened by mock sexual inter course, or an old woman carrying a cradle. Event the actors roles are sometimes transferred to people in animal disguises.
 Every region in Turkey, every village even has its own dance and Turkish music . 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; combat (with or without weapons) and courtship. Even today these Turkish folk dramas, puppet performances 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

 The Turkish theatre 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 proffessional performers: live actors; storytellers and puppeteers (both shadow and marionette). Its characteristic traits were imitation and mimicry of dialectic peculiarities, and imitation of animalsby stock characters called taklit, easly recognized by the audiance because of their standard costumes and signature tunes and dances. The comedian, puppeteer and storyteller memorized certain stock phrases 8some 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 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, conjurors 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 inter spersed 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 tha barbarians.”
 The description gives an idea of some manifestations of the dramatic instinct of the Seljuk Turks in the tweltfh century. Prior to ortaoyunu, which is the Turkish commedia dell’arte, traces of Turkish dramatic art could be foundin farces, impropomptu 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 comicsituations, 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 influance of the Europan 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 puppet 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 influance, 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 audiance, Ortaoyunu can be called presentational or non-illusionistic. The actor does not lose his identity as an actor and shows his awareness of his to the audience. The audiance does not regard him as pretending to be a real person but as an actor. The acting area is not seperated from the audiance, 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 audiance 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 audiances. Each episode is independent; consequently, in different performances, the episodes can be interchanged, added to or subtracted from, according to the audiance’s reactions or the puppeteer’s or actor’s decision, without upsetting the general course of the action. Surviving titles and scenerii show resemblances and close parallels between Karagoz Hacivat and Ortaoyunu plots.
 The second from of the popular theater tradition is the daramatic story told by a single speaker called the Meddah (literally, praisegiver 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 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 medieaval 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 wellcome 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, equestrain games and hunting, but also dancing, music, poetic recitations, and performances by jugglers, mountebanks and buffons. Pegeants were given on gaudy wagons or on ordinary carts fitted with large-canopied platforms, each carrying a guild group performing scenes appropriate toits 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 abadoned 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 İstibdat 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.

*Traditional Turkish Shadow Theatre, By Metin And

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