| The dissertation studies the Turkish shadow puppet theater, an art form that has been very popular in Ottoman Istanbul since its introduction in the sixteenth century. The play constituted a special frame of activity in a city inhabited by diverse ethnic and linguistic communities. It was a comic performance where language, communication, and sexuality were foregrounded. The political authority in Istanbul sought by way of decrees to ensure that the inhabitants of the city were cast in politically, ethnically, professionally, and sexually defined roles. The symbolic world thus constructed was deconstructed in the shadow puppet play. Opposed to the carefully staged community guided by rules and taboos, the audience participated in a world of puppets where speech increased lack of communication and where sexuality was no longer repressed. The dissertation shows how Turkish entertainers have played upon this imperial attempt at regulating communication and sexuality. Examples are given of interpretations, mostly from European travellers, who have judged these shows as obscene. It is shown how a sensitivity for the functions of artistic, ritual, or comic activities is essential for our interpretation of the Turkish shadow theater. It is argued how the medium was an important part of the genre. The entertainment provided by Turkish shadow puppet performances often revolved around the deconstruction of both visual and linguistic material. Its comedy was meta-theatrical. Rather than suspending the audience's belief in the physical reality of the performance, it encouraged the awareness of the here-and-now of theater. Rather than following the conventions of representation and of linguistic communication, it dissected theater into its basic elements of image, motion, and voice. It further dissected voice, or language into its basic elements of sound and meaning. The dissertation also analyzes the structural development of the play and shows how the format of the performance as well as the repertoire of plays and characters achieved laughter in the specific context of Ottoman Istanbul. For text analysis, the dissertation uses the extensive repertoire of plays that were transcribed from the performances of a particular puppeteer, namely Nazif Efendi, in 1915. |
