Well-known film and television actress Meena Naik has played an instrumental role in popularising puppetry in India. Over the last two decades, she has presented several shows using various forms of puppetry and familiarised children with one of the oldest forms of storytelling in India. Her latest production is a compilation of two classic stories – The Circus and Rupa The Elephant (also known as Rupa Chinchi) which will be performed for the first time this weekend.
Based on a story by Sahitya Akademi Award winner Madhuri Purandare, The Circus is a non-verbal play which revolves around a 10-year-old girl who is keen to see the circus. How she creates her own show by using her imagination and everyday objects as props forms the crux of the story. Naik elaborates, “The girl uses an umbrella for ropewalk and hula hoop for acrobatics and impresses her mother with her ingenuity. The story propagates the importance of why kids should use their creativity and how appreciation from adults can motivate them. Music plays a pivotal role in the 25-minute performance.”
The second story is based on the late cartoonist and illustrator Mickey Patel’s work by the same name. It is about an elephant, Rupa, who feels that she looks ugly. Her close friend Chinchi, a bird, seeks the help of their other friends to lend some beautiful colours to Rupa. Though Rupa is pleased with her new appearance, the children find her scary and run away. She soon realises that her natural look was wonderful. So she cleans herself in a pond and eventually the children come back for the ride. “It carries an underlying moral that, beauty is not all that matters, but what we are is more important. We have used coloured shadow puppetry, where figures cut out of leather are held between a source of light and translucent screen, to depict the various animals,” describes Naik.
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The sexagenarian, who has staged several performances over the years, believes in devising pieces that have an important message for kids and adults alike. In 1998, Naik attended a conference in Colombo that triggered her first play on child sexual abuse. “My plays have dealt with topics like child sexual abuse and child trafficking. I used puppets and live actors to tell the story.” Naik’s device of using shadow puppets in black and white proved to be an effective one. She says, “The abuser is always in the shadows and the victim wants to suppress those unhappy memories. After the performance, children opened up and started talking about their own experiences. This prompted me to make my second play on child trafficking.” Naik’s last production was about the Swachh Bharat campaign, she says, “I like it when children interact with me and the artistes after the performance. It is always important to have a conversation with them and hear their views. ”
Naik, who is also the Head of the Puppetry Department at University of Mumbai, has also devised a certificate course, the first-ever formal educational course in puppetry in the country. As a child Naik, was intrigued by the puppets she’d seen from visiting troupes from various East European countries. “Forty years ago when I wanted to learn puppetry, there was no such course in India. Moreover, we had a mindset here that puppetry involves only handling string puppets made out of wood or cloth.” Today Naik is pleased to note the response to the university course, she says, “There is a greater understanding among people about the importance of puppetry. Now, they are experimenting with diverse techniques to appeal to a wider audience and that is a heartening sign.”
The Circus
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