Greek shadow puppeteer, one of the masters of the karaghiozis (Modern Greek: Καραγκιόζης) form of puppetery. Sotiris Spatharis started his career in 1909 by putting up shows using his own figures and plays that he had himself created. He travelled the country accompanied by a singer. He was the first shadow showman to use advertising placards, which he himself painted, to announce his shows; and the first to distinguish himself with epilogues, called “apotheoses with the whole body”, played by the puppeteer and his assistant facing the stage at the end of his repertory of “heroic” plays.

Sotiris was the father of Eugenios Spatharis (Ευγένιος Σπαθάρης).

(See Greece.)