FOLK PLAYS - SPECTACLE PLAYS - SHOWS

VILLAGE SHOWS

Village shows known as “villager theatre” are ceremonial plays performed to celebrate the new year and for wealth and health under the name of “making play” “performing a play” on certain days of the year. These plays are performed in the rooms in winter as well as in open spaces. These plays which have been inherited from primitive societies were plays that were consciously performed for a productive life and for expressing the gratitude to supernatural forces to god or to gods. These plays whose bases are different believes and myths have the traces of old Anatolian civilizations, of cultural elements that our people living in Anatolia have brought from Middle East and the traces of a cultural synthesis of Islamic elements that have been combined with other elements after the acceptance of Islam.

These shows are examples of a primitive theatre. These are functions in social and religious aspects rather than the art aspect.

These shows are formed of plays in which daily lives (tinner, barber, ploughing etc.) in which the animals (camel, bear, fox, eagle etc.) are imitated and the plays which are performed for a change of seasons, years and plays which are performed for wealth and fertility (collecting sheep taxes, ceremonies of adding a ram, jamel play etc.) and plays to make the rain fall (rain charm bride).

Jamel Play: is played on the first day when the seed is thrown into the soil.

Adding a ram: is controlling the period of bringing forth young of the animals’ babies, since they are vulnerable to cold and hunger in winter. This is kind of a season celebration.

Face of the camel, face of the sheep: is played when the baby in the womb of the animal is beginning to grow feathers.

Examples from the plays