The daily and periodical press constitutes one of the most important sources of information regarding the Greek Shadow Theatre's history. Special importance is to be given to the press of provincial cities, where performances of local karagkiosopektes and mainly of others coming from the capital, form a cultural event, even of less importance, that deserves to be published. For the same reasons, various events that include Shadow Theatre performances are also considered as news and there are informative articles, chronicles, interviews etc. being published about them.
Over the last decade, the research in this field has been facilitated to a great extent by the digitized archives, created mainly by various public unions and organizations, such as the National Library, the Library of the Parliament, the EKEBI (National Book Centre of Greece) and more. However, the huge number of newspapers and magazines, the brief existence of most of them, and their often marginal character constitute undoubtedly an important hindrance to the fast completion in digitizing, fact that impedes the research.
In the field of Shadow Theatre, the activation of researching groups, whose objective is the documentation and digitization of the related sources, is also noticed. A typical example forms (is) the research program “History of the Neogreek Theatre”, which under the directorship of professor Theodoros Xatzipantazis, is realized by the Institute of Mediterranean Studies of the University of Crete. In this particular program, that includes the bulletin listing, recording and filing of printed material and also the creation of a data base of testimonies in both Greek and foreign press of the 19th and early 20th century, was included as well in the Shadow Theatre. Following the same idea, in the framework of the program C. Caratheodoris of the University of Patras, the scientific work “Repertoire of the Shadow Theatre in Patras during the Interwar Period”, under the direction of the assistant professor Ioanna Papageorgiou, is realized. The work aims at gathering and digital editing of all testimonies concerning performances and the repertoire of karagkiosopektes, who had Patras of the Interwar Period as their main destination. Equally interesting is the digitization of private archive´s printed material, like the one of karagkiosopektis and scholar of Shadow Theatre, Athos Danellis.
The objective of the program “Archive/Database of the Greek Shadow Theatre” is the gradual completion of the work and the collaboration with university programs and departments, private unions and individuals, who have already advanced in digitizing the archival material or just want to contribute in this section.
