Summary

Alternative Name(s): bill poster

This poster is a copy based on a poster printed in the late 1970s which features the work of the puppeteer and artist S. Kouzarou. It features Greek Shadow puppet characters Uncle Yiorgos and Karaghiozis. The poster was brought to Australia from Greece by Dimitri Katsoulis in the early 1990s; the originals are held in a museum collection in Greece. The original poster features the same figures but with additional text indicating its use to advertise both the artist and the Alexandra antiquities and popular art shop of the late Kosta Sokara in Athens.Two versions of the poster were printed by G. Voulgaridis, a student and friend of S Kouzarou: one with the advertisement and the other without (as featured in the version of the poster in the Museum's collection).

Dimitri Katsoulis migrated to Australia in 1974 to escape a regime that repressed Greek artists. He had trained in Greece with theatre and film companies as an actor and technician. Unable to obtain funding and support, he returned to Greece in 1991, leaving his entire collection to the people of Victoria. It includes 32 shadow puppets and around 170 props, set backdrops and technical tools and stage equipment. Dimitri has since returned to Melbourne and assists the Museum to continue to document this rich art form within both local and international contexts.

Information supplied by Greek Shadow Puppet Theatre master Dimitri Katsoulis, 2007, and updated from information supplied by Tasos Kouzaros in 2017.

Physical Description

Small poster in portrait format, featuring two animated Greek Shadow Puppet Theatre characters in brown colour tones: Karaghiozis and Uncle Yiorgos. They are in conversation. The poster has a blue border and across the top and at the bottom right hand corner there is text in Greek [see inscrioptions for translation].

Significance

This collection of puppets, props, stage sets, and technical tools and equipment relating to traditional Greek Shadow Puppet Theatre is unique in Australia and rare in international public collections. The history of Greek Shadow Puppet Theatre, its puppet characters and the methodology of its performance has been recorded in partnership with the puppet master to whom the collection belonged. The collection is highly significant both as documentation of an important cross-cultural, centuries-old art form, and as an example of the transnational migration of cultural activity between Greece and Australia. It is a collection which was created and performed in Greece and Australia from the mid to late twentieth century, by two puppet masters, who transported the tradition between two countries. Abraam Antonakos came to Australia in 1977 to perform the puppet theatre and then deposited the puppets with Dimitri Katsoulis, who had migrated to Australia in 1974. Dimitri's story becomes one of migration experience, cultural maintenance and adaptation, and finally return migration and the discontinuance of this cultural art form in Australia.

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