The mountain bandits of the Hellenic Shadow Theatre of Karaghiozis: criminals or heroes?

From the time of the legendary mountain bandit Davelis in the 1850s (and almost since the foundation of the modern Hellenic state in 1828), the fate of the modern Hellenic State has been marked either by a weakness to meet with the citizens’ expectations or, in order to quieten subsequent reactions, by a series of oppressive measures, including dictatorships. This policy would unavoidably instigate some kind of aggressive retaliation in the form of banditry. Karaghiozis, a form of traditional shadow theatre that articulated the worldview of the lower social strata for more than half a century (1890-1960), became a vehicle through which artists and spectators communicated their own standpoint towards banditry and violent retaliation. It formulated a special category of plays that dramatised actual or fictitious bandits. In the first place, that group of plays may be regarded as an indication of the spectators’ fascination with bandits or as a surrogate experience for the desire to take vengeance brought about by their misery. However, as it gradually developed its own poetics, it revealed a capacity for discrimination by establishing a series of codes regarding acceptable and objectionable banditry. Ioanna Papageorgiou is Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre Studies at the University of Patras in Greece.1