Theater
There are 13 professional theaters in the Republic of Macedonia. From 1993-1994 1,596 performances were held in the newly formed republic, and more than 330,000 people attended. The Macedonian National Theatre (Drama, Opera and Ballet companies), the Drama Theatre, the Theatre of the Nationalities (Albanian and Turkish Drama companies) and the other theatre companies comprise about 870 professional actors, singers, ballet dancers, directors, playwrights, set and costume designers, etc. There is also a professional theatre for children and three amateur theatres. For the last thirty years a traditional festival of Macedonian Slav professional theatres has been taking place in Prilep in honor of Vojdan Cernodrinski, the founder of the modern Macedonian theatre. Each year a festival of amateur and experimental Macedonian theatre companies is held in Kocani.
The word Karagöz is a Turkish word literally meaning a black eye, but it is a specific type of theatre in the Republic of Macedonia as in many other Balkan countries. This picturesque, original and exceptionally popular theatre reached the Balkans from the Far East. Shifting slowly but surely from the Far East towards the Middle East, this type of theater went through a transformation as it was passed along from person to person through many cultures. The Karagoz Theater came to the Balkans together with the Ottoman Empire. In the history of the Macedonian culture the name of this theater was mentioned starting from the 11th, or at least the 14th century. A Turkish legend speaks about the origin of the construction of a large mosque in Bursa and its constructors among whom were two friends and storytellers known as Karagöz and Hadzivat. Instead of working, they sat and told comical stories to the workers. Their performances were so attractive to their audience that the construction of the mosque completely stopped - the construction site instead became a theater. When the Sultan heard what had happened he became furious and ordered the execution of the two friends. Karagoz and Hadzivat were unable to escape their fate but the citizens of Bursa were overcome by grief at the loss of the two heroes. The Sultan realized his folly and tried to correct it by ordering the revival of the two men. Unable to actually give them life, the sultan kept them alive in the form of small, transparent puppets made of thin and colored skin. If they were to be placed in front of a white curtain with a burning candle behind it, they would dance as if they were alive and the sultan had redeemed himself.
Although this theatre includes a number of characters-puppets, its eminent theatricality emerges from the complex relation between its central masks of Karagoz and Hadzivat. Karagoz personifies an ordinary Greek in the Ottoman Empire. He is dressed simply as any other passers-by on the streets of Constantinople. He speaks plainly and in a language common to the people. He is clever and stupid at the same time, naive and witty. Although he is as poor as a dog, he desires only to eat his bread in without distraction or interference. Equally important is his teasing his constantly angry enemy, whose name is Hadzivat and who is a little bit slow, but not necessarily stupid. Hadzivat speaks conceitedly using archaic words, pretending to be wise and in actuality being a boringly pedant, rigid, corruptible, opportunist who constantly emphasizes his aristocratic origin. Karagoz Theater is Turkish folk humor at its best. The famous Turkish traveler and diplomat, Evlija Celebija, traveled in the Balkans in the first half of the 17th century and wrote about his travels in ten books in which he discusses performances of Karagoz in Bosnia, Serbia, and in the republic's capital Skopje. Karagoz Theater was brought to the region by the Ottoman Turks and easily adapted to the new environment, existing for centuries up to the 1950s.
Read more about this topic: Macedonian Culture (Slavic)
Famous quotes containing the word theater:
“Since people no longer attend church, theater remains as the only public service, and literature as the only private devotion.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“The theater is a baffling business, and a shockingly wasteful one when you consider that people who have proven their worth, who have appeared in or been responsible for successful plays, who have given outstanding performances, can still, in the full tide of their energy, be forced, through lack of opportunity, to sit idle season after season, their enthusiasm, their morale, their very talent dwindling to slow gray death. Of finances we will not even speak; it is too sad a tale.”
—Ilka Chase (1905–1978)
“All I can tell you with certainty is that I, for one, have no self, and that I am unwilling or unable to perpetrate upon myself the joke of a self.... What I have instead is a variety of impersonations I can do, and not only of myself—a troupe of players that I have internalised, a permanent company of actors that I can call upon when a self is required.... I am a theater and nothing more than a theater.”
—Philip Roth (b. 1933)