Puppet festival to save the art form launched

Kolkata: A six-day puppet festival was inaugurated in the city on Thursday. Puppeteers from UK, Germany, Peru, Portugal, Italy, Lithuania, Brazil and Singapore along with Indian puppeteers have taken part in the festival which is being held at Mohor Kunja.

The PUN ( Puppets Unite Neighbours) International festival has evoked great enthusiasm among people coming from all walks of life. The purpose of the festival is to create awareness about puppetry and bring together puppeteers from across the world. Puppetry, which is a popular form of art, is slowly losing its importance. Many puppeteers from India have been forced to leave the profession because of poverty. It was very popular in rural Bengal and puppetry was once used to create awareness against social maladies like child marriage or against the outbreak of diseases. Variety of puppet acts ranging from string, rod, glove, shadow, knee giant, human, theatre street, interactive and balloon puppetry with amazing creativity are being showcased here.

From India, well known puppeteers like Ravi Bhat from Rajasthan has joined the show. He is an expert on Kath Putli. Saravana Dhanapal from Bengaluru has brought giant puppets too. Jitendra Advani has brought mast maker human puppets from Rajasthan. Sudip Gupta from city-based Dolls Theatre and Edwin and Lee, Dragon act and Lion dance have also joined the festival.

The CIA team from Brazil has joined the festival. It is trying to investigate into the relationship between theatre, music, contemporary dance and animated forms.

From Peru, Jose Navarro theatre will be showcasing modern puppetry. The puppeteers from Germany, Singapore, Portugal and Lithuania are major crowd-pullers.