E ven as the curtain went up to the beat of drums and Rajasthani artists, Kutchi ghodis and dhol with giant puppets dance at the start of the 15th Ishara International Puppet Theatre Festival at the India Habitat Centre, recently, we caught up with Dadi Pudumjee, master puppeteer, and the man behind it, to talk about the art and its finer and varied nuances.
This year apart from India, there is participation from Afghanistan, Germany, Indonesia, Iran, Palestine, Spain, Sweden, and Taiwan. The festival will be on till February 10 in Delhi, Gurgaon and Chandigarh simultaneously.
Excerpts from the interview:
To what extent has traditional puppetry drifted towards modern puppetry and in what ways?
I don’t think it has drifted. We have traditional puppeteers with their techniques in some eight States of India and they are experimenting with new techniques and themes too. I’m conducting a master class for Union Internationale de la Marionnette (UNIMA) India in Jaipur starting February 16 for two weeks where 10 youngsters from various traditional puppet groups will participate with other modern puppeteers and artists.
The idea is to see what is innovation, design, production quality, etc, within the tradition and how they themselves would go on to define tradition.
Puppetry in films has been there for long. You’ve experimented with this genre in Haider . How do you think puppetry made its way into films and what kind of filmmakers like to experiment with it?
This is an individual choice of the director. A lot more can be done in this realm as far as puppetry and films are concerned. I wouldn't call it experimentation for a film because when a director uses puppets in his film, he needs to know why he wants to see puppets there and whether he wants them just for a certain kind of effect or as a prop or to add some logical value to the film.
How different was it to make puppets for a film and use them for this medium?
Making puppets is very different for stage, film and also television. The puppets to be used for a film are far more detailed especially for close-ups where non-reflecting material is used.
Television advertisements are using puppets too. Do you think they add to the value of the same? How?
Not many ad filmmakers are really using puppets. I wish it were true as it is for some other countries. Ishara did the first Pepsi Mirinda ad, as also BPL vacuum cleaner, and a few others in Mumbai have also done their bit. But the potential needs to be far better explored and used extensively.
Animation took the lead from puppetry to give a whole new form to the visual medium. Did that give a setback to puppetry?
No. Both have lent to each other especially in stop frame animation ads.
Don’t you feel that puppetry/puppet making should be introduced at school level to give wings to children’s creative instincts and imagination?
Definitely. Some schools have been doing this. Ishara has worked in many schools in India and abroad putting together puppets, dance, projection, shadow puppets etc. to tell a story and create shows. It is a very good medium for expression and education.
In what ways can puppetry become a medium of education for children?
In many ways – art, expression, history, teaching simple language skills, helping them create social awareness and teaching them civility.
What is the difference in puppetry today as compared to when you started many years back?
We all grow with time. Traditions have evolved; modern puppeteers are more aware of new themes and educational work, the quality of production has tremendously improved as also the thematic content.
What, according to you, have been the distinctive features of international puppetry as compared to Indian puppetry? (How are they different?)
The language is the same. The techniques are also the same. What matters or differentiates it is how you use them –tradition versus modern, tradition and modern synergised etc. A lot depends on the director and the artists also. One cannot generalize here.
Indonesian puppetry uses traditional Wayang shadow puppets but how they have used it with film projection and live actors and dancers is what makes it different.
The craft is being used as a social mouthpiece. How far do you think is this going to help the Indian society that doesn’t change attitudes and mindsets with ease?
Greatly and it has in small pockets reached out to people propagating a social message. All puppeteers have been working on various issue-based themes. It depends upon how well the medium and the message co-exist and combine and it should not be an end in itself rather a means combined with other mediums. Then it really works well.
Collaboration has become integral to all art forms today. But doesn’t it kill the authenticity or purity of the art form especially in puppetry?
No it doesn’t. Not every show is a collaboration. Some are. And it adds to both the collaborators forms.
How challenging is it to create and make each puppet different from the other (the face and the look)?
It is as difficult or easy as any other profession – art, theatre, dance, etc.
A project you are looking at doing in the future
There are many in the pipeline. We may soon be doing an educational workshop on inclusion, education and health in Myanmar with non-puppeteers and NGO workers.
