A new diploma breathes life back into the art of Indian puppetry

Students come from different backgrounds. There are Tholpavakoothu artists from Kerala, Tare Putul artists from Bengal, and those from urban backgrounds

Shadow puppet show in Chennai

If you had visited Delhi’s Crafts Museum in the last few months, you would have found people engrossed in animated conversation with puppets. Or someone repairing a broken wooden limb. This isn’t an everyday scene at the museum: but for last four months the place has been host to India’s first diploma course on puppetry. And for this artist community, these few months have been a momentous time, as the first batch of students gears up for a future in puppetry.

UNIMA India, a Delhi-base puppetry organisation, has worked for six years, experimenting, brainstorming, faltering, learning, before arriving at the carefully crafted diploma programme. Much of it is born out of the stories of struggle of previous generations of puppeteers: about the lack of not just space and learning opportunities, but of critical discourse and a community that supports the art.

Night-long show

Anurupa Roy, who has been at the helm of this work, recalls how once she was the only one in the audience, along with a dog, at a night-long Tholpavakoothu performance in Kerala. Despite formal training in Sweden, she had to start from scratch here until senior puppeteers like Dadi Pudumjee and Ranjana Pandey took her under their wing.

So, although the course aims to train people in puppet-making, scenography, narrative building, and manipulating different kinds of puppets, it is equally about building a community of puppeteers that can support each other.

The students come from diverse backgrounds. There are Tholpavakoothu artists from Kerala, Tare Putul artists from Bengal, and students from urban, non-traditional backgrounds as well. “The objective is not to turn everybody into full-time puppeteers but to help them find their own questions within the field, help them build their niche and discover their own voice,” says Ranjana Pandey, president, UNIMA India. “Some might become puppet-makers, some might choose to work with puppets in schools, while others might become performers.”

Gagan Kumar, a student with a background in contemporary puppetry and education, finds the course valuable for the interactions and the projects he has been able to build. The course has landed him an internship, which involves building a school curriculum using puppetry. “I am happy I can bring my interests in education and puppetry together,” he says.

A puppet show in Ramanathapuram

 

For a traditional puppeteer like Sajeesh Pullavar from Kerala, the exposure to different styles has been eye-opening. “I regularly offer workshops in schools, and I can now introduce new aspects of puppetry as well.”

The course has definitely made a difference to the students. “Those who were hesitant to call themselves puppeteers earlier began to refer to themselves as puppeteers,” says Roy, and “those who were sure of puppetry, went back reassured that their struggle was worthwhile.”

The course evolved from a series of residential masterclasses, which served as pedagogic experiments. They raised many questions about the ethics of knowledge transfer: What does it mean for traditional masters to teach puppetry to students outside their community? Do young, traditional puppeteers benefit learning from contemporary masters? What is appropriation in the context of puppetry traditions in India?

The course, however, is not without its share of challenges.“With no two students (eight in total) coming from the same background, language became a barrier,” says Pandey. “The reading material and films being predominantly English, they couldn’t be understood by everyone. As for those who came from urban settings, they struggled with a paucity of narratives.” Despite these shortcomings the students learnt to depend on each other for support and feedback. Everyone agrees that a future in puppetry now looks less bleak, Roy says, “When I see people walking around with puppets, engrossed in getting their manipulation right, or repairing them or just doing puppetry, I feel the community has definitely grown. Puppeteers aren’t so alone any more.”

The writer is a reviewer and documentarian of Indian performing arts.

Picturesque India

Niyogi Books has brought out a collection of early Indian picture postcards from the period 1896 to 1947. Collected mostly from the Czech Republic and curated along the transport routes in India at the time, the 550 postcards are arranged in six chapters corresponding to regions of the subcontinent.