When Louis Roussel published
Antoni Mollas’ “Ligo ap’ola” in 1921, for sure he could not imagine that he was
inaugurating the era of the commercialization of the plays belonging to the
Greek Shadow Theatre repertoire. Two or three years later, Markos Xanthos and
A. Mollas also published plays of their own in booklets of 32 pages, soon being
imitated by Kostas Ganios, Kostas Manos and Yiannis Roulias. Later, some
publishing houses, like “Keraunos & Pallas Athina”, “A. Gelantalis kai
Sia”, “Saravanos – Vouniseas”, “D. Deli”, “Agyra” and others, started the
massive (for the time) publication of plays. It must be highlighted that many of
these plays were not written by Karagkiosopektes, but by various authors who
often presented fiction stories that did not exist in the typical repertoire of
the shadow theatre until then. Their example was soon followed by different
magazines, many of which started to include in their issues stories of the
repertoire of the shadow theatre, either in complete form or in installments.
Apart from the adulteration of the texts, this
unexpected development caused as well a steep breach of the oral tradition,
which was the origin of this popular genre. In spite of this, many of these published
plays constitute important examples of the Karagkiosis’ typical drama during
his early phases, not to forget the linguistic expressions that govern it. Its being one of the most popular
texts also contributed to the wide spreading of this particular humour, which
deeply invaded the family life. For decades, it constituted part of
the juvenile and adults´ entertainment especially while reading out loud. Thus,
the stories of the Karagkiosis became a common means of home-entertainment for
all ages.
In the course of time, the texts of the
popular Karagkiosis started to adapt themselves to illustrated publications,
until they finally acquired the form of comics.
Equally, the caustic popular satire of the
genre was quickly adopted, mainly by magazines of left inclination, which also
started to publish small stories with the typical heroes of the shadow theatre
to criticise the country’s social and political life.
The phenomenon of booklets and other texts based on Karagkiosis, is an important chapter of
the research and study of the shadow theatre history, and this is why the
collection and digitization of all printed material constitutes one of the
basic axes of the program.
