From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Karagöz Döngüsü: The Shadow-Puppet Recurrence (2012)
A theatrical adaptation of Beach Surgery using Turkish Karagöz shadow-puppet traditions.
For other shadow-puppet theatre works, see Turkish adaptations of Beach Surgery.
A Turkish Karagöz shadow-puppet theatre adaptation produced in Istanbul, rendering Beach Surgery's central cycle through the traditional silhouette-and-light language of Karagöz. The work preserves Leif and Katita's structural relationship but stages them as leather profiles—Leif's three injuries become silhouette absences and asymmetries, Katita's red meridian renders as a blood-dark slash.
The adaptation's formal intervention: the shadow itself becomes the glitch. Where narrative halves should join, shadows bleed through the screen simultaneously—two hands in one space, two heartbeats audible at once. The traditional Karagöz trope of chaotic doubling and linguistic error is mobilized to stage the seam as irresolvable. The mechanical seagull appears as a monstrous shadow-creature that devours coherence.
Performance records are sparse. The work is believed to have toured regional Turkish theatre festivals but was never formally archived or published. Some accounts suggest a final performance in ███████ in 2013, after which no further productions are documented [citation needed].