“You can’t make me vanish. I am alive here...” read a poster outside a room on the ground floor of Savarayalu Nayakar Government Girls High School.
The small room was dark when the children entered and as they sat down in anticipation, a small portion of a black screen was lit on the top corner shedding light on a green leaf. When the leaf fluttered slowly, a green caterpillar moved in with a smile followed by a brown-spotted butterfly.
Screams of young children filled the room as soon as Neruppu da music from Kabali movie started playing. Slowly, the spotlight moved on to tiny huts. A man clad in a gaudy dress entered the scene moving gingerly and engaged in conversation with a ‘fortune teller’ decked in dazzling attire with a conical cap and holding damaru .
Laughter broke out in the darkness when these characters made from paper-mache appeared. Behind the dark screen, nine and 10 year old girls from the primary section of the school and their teacher K. Sivaprakasan were moving these puppets that talked about ‘cleanliness’.
The first-of-its-kind puppet theatre, created and run by a teacher and students of this government school in Puducherry, has been hosting puppet shows for schoolchildren for the past three weeks.
With permission from the education department, half of the reading-cum-computer room of the school has been painted black and a huge black screen, divided into three segments with different backgrounds made the stage for puppets. The Department of Science, Technology and Environment, teachers, headmistress of the primary school section and many have chipped in to set up the puppet theatre.
Mr. Sivaprakasan is determined to revive the dying art of puppetry by introducing the story telling method and teaching the children to make hand puppets from paper-mache. Catching up with the new trends to keep the audience hooked to the folk art, they have adapted a different style of narration. Instead of telling the story with folk music they play musical scores from the latest movies. To create a 3D effect, they have introduced a few glow puppets tied to a wire just above the place where audience are seated.
Bringing in modern elements to the traditional art, the puppet show was an instant hit with the children. “It is the passion of the teacher and interest in students that has made this effort successful,” said R. Sandaravadany, headmistress of the primary school section.
Sarva Siksha Abhiyan has asked the school to use this theatre for community mobilisation by bringing students from other government schools for the puppet show.