A workshop organized by The Seagull Foundation for the Arts, to enhance the art of storytelling using puppetry. Participants were taken through the process of selecting stories, creating storyboards, creating puppets and manipulating them.The puppets were made with newspaper. The puppet movements were loosely based on the Japanese Bunraku technique.
Anurupa Roy is founder and Managing Trustee at Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust. She has directed About Ram, The Magic Blue, Kashmir Project, Celebration of Life, Virus Ka Tamasha, Pather Panchali. Panjarshala, Almost Twelfth Night, Half a Kingdom, Her Voice, The Flowering Tree.
Let there be life
Bruno Leone, traditional Italian glove puppeteer and one of my teachers, often asks the audience at the end of his show: ‘What is the secret of Pulchinella [his main character which symbolizes puppetry itself?’ The audience makes many guesses. Some say ‘coordination’, some say ‘skill’ and some say ‘practice or design’. Sometimes a child makes the correct guess and Bruno smiles widely and Pulchinella cackles.
The right answer according to Bruno is ‘love’. For a puppet to come alive, speak, act, breathe and live, the secret is ‘love’. I have often pondered about this critically, cynically and logically. At first it sounds soppy.
But Bruno’s philosophy begins to make sense after a point. I have come to the conclusion that there is really no logic as to why I am a puppeteer. The simple reason is that I ‘love’ puppets—I love making them, designing them, and then using them on stage.
I love being a puppeteer and what it lets me do, like the license to say almost anything using the puppets, the ability to travel almost anywhere and in my way bring some fun and joy to people.
— Anurupa Roy
