Step into the world of puppets

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Turkish group’s Garbage Monster and Italyian theatre’s Manovia.

THE STAGE is set to break the silence. Their slumber would end with their robes and cloaks whirling across the theatre wings. Their strings would be pulled and these awakened souls would splatter colours and swirl musical notes to make their presence felt. They would transform into actors and characters sprinkling tales out of the magic box. They would bend and bow for the desire of their master. They would be called puppets and they would make you laugh, weep and exclaim. The occasion would be the ninth Ishara International Puppet Festival, beginning today at Epicentre Gurgaon and India Habitat Centre.
Ishara Puppet Theatre has been founded by legend puppeteer Dadi Pudumjee in 1986. The group’s productions range from visual poems, folklore and satire, including television and educational programmes.
This year the festival has international participation from Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Turkey, UK and Spain. The curtains rise with Pudumejee’s own production Anokhe Vastra, based on Danish author Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperors New Clothes. Ishara’s Hindi adaptation uses large masks and colourful costumes, complimented with a lively musical score from Brazil and other popular beats to unravel the 200-year-old tale. The play projects the phrase “emperor’s new clothes” as a metaphor for anything that smacks of pretentiousness, social hypocrisy, collective denial or hollow ostentatiousness. “I did this script for the first time in 1986 which became very popular. I have revived the same script with new group of artistes and some creative additions. We have also included a prologue on aspirations and dreams, “says Pudumjee, who has been honoured with Padma awards this year.
An Indonesian group Wayang Golek Ajen is showcasing the tales of Ramayana in Penculikan Dewi Sinta — Sita Haran and Guguranya Rahwana — Death of Ravna. Combining the traditional style with modern sensibilities, the group’s work has evolved from the classical form of Wayang Golek Sunda — an old, traditional form of Indonesia theatre using wooden puppets. The Ajen puppeteers combine the traditional literary works with their own spontaneous embellishments according to the time, place and circumstance.
The Train Theatre of Israel is set to take the audience on a trip to evergreen forest at the end of the world, and meet the “rain bird” through their show The Rain Bird — A Paper Tale. Directed and adapted by Naomi Yoeli and designed and performed by Galia levy-Grad, the play is combination of Origami, a Japanese folk art of paper folding, and the art of storytelling.
Turkish director and performer Cengiz Ozek brings “Karagöz” and “Hacivat”, the lead characters of the traditional Turkish shadow plays, popularised during the Ottoman period. With the art of shadow puppet, the play The Garbage Monster dives deep into a sea and revolves around the ecological message.
A red balloon with a mind of its own follows a small boy around the streets of the city in the Red Balloon, performed by the UK’s String Theatre Marionettists. The boy and the balloon become friends and play together, and later elude a gang of bullies who want to destroy the balloon.
Spanish show Pregnant Earth starts in the backdrop of Australian desert where the ground is clean, then it takes shape in Puxkin, near Petersburg, with the dirt of a tired Russia, crude and fertile, and soars in the libraries of Sarajevo, with the ashes of millions of burnt books, earthquake of ideas and burning the art of poetry.
Puppeteer Joan Baixas paints with mud on a big illuminated translucent screen. Images appear and are erased, combined with slide projections, a process of actions centred on the earth. Avoiding narration, Baixas uses his whole body to tackle a new form of dramaturgy, based on a pictorial language. Splashes, scrawls, light and dark, line and erasure, abstract, symbolic, figurative and geometrical images are the characters in this choreographed drama.
Italy’s Girovago et Rondella Family Theatre’s Manoviva portrays the five-finger puppet, composed of five elements — a head, two hands and two feet. The two-act show uses no words to narrate the story. The first act transports the viewers to the circus with the jugglery and acrobatics; while the second act is made up of short stories, using no words but a universal language through symbols. At the end of the show, the audience gets a unique opportunity to interact with the puppet themselves.
Two other Indian shows, Hamara Circus, and The Little Prince.
Directed and designed by Mohammed Shameem, Hamara Circus extracts the essence of day-to-day family life in the form of string theatre. Little Prince, directed by the revolutionary face of the contemporary Indian theatre, Arvind Gaur, has actress Rashi Bunny on stage.
Antoine De Saint Exupery’s The Little Prince is a world classic that views the whole panorama of life from a child’s perspective: that is to say, with innocence, sensitivity, honesty and non judgment. “Little Prince It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. With him we shall arrive to the place… we truly belong. And if one fails to instantly see that spot, do not worry, just believe in him and hear him say,” says Gaur.

ANOTHER ATTRACTION of the festival is a three-day workshop by world famous puppeteer Joan Baixas Arias from Spain at the IHC, beginning February 9. The workshop “Smile-Worldmap”, directed by Baixas in collaboration with Nico Baixas, is an open-format work that can be adapted to the location and the participants. Smile-Worldmap is an introductory workshop on visual theatre, aimed at students and artists interested in the fusion of the rhetoric and grammar of artistic languages. It is a course on the practice and analysis of the resources and tools necessary for the creation of scenes with bodies, images and objects and how to present them to the public. Baixas plans to conduct this workshop in atleast five cities across India, and connect all the identified artistes for new experiments.
But the real delight is the Ishara has opened almost all shows for children as well. What needs to be highlighted is the struggle Pudumjee faces each year for raising sponsorship for the international festival. This annual event of puppets has emerged as a platform for contemporary puppeteers all over the world. Hats off to the spirit and struggle of the Ishara group.