Puppet mania

In past we have made finger and straw puppets, and since long like I forgot puppets. Before Dashera I have visited Shreyas School, Ahmedabad. Puppets in museum suddenly awaken me and I fall in love with puppets. I was sure it will similarly affect Ashna too.

Started with making of Ravan. On Dashera we made Ravan (w/o crackers) and burnt it.

Downloaded and saw children some puppet shows. First experimented with shadow puppet…..as it is simple and surprising for children. Almost more than a week after darkness, shadow puppetry was our daily program. It was amazing for them to see how they can create different animal’s shadow with just their hands and how small things appears bigger on screen.

Then after making puppets is constant demand from Ashna. I promised them making more puppets after Diwali and they started collecting things. Small balls for heads, gloves,wool,googly eyes,lolly sticks,sketch pen etc….and almost everything which is trash now going to collection for puppets.

Once we made simple card paper puppet, found need of story. Ashna has big plan, making beautiful puppet theatre and making all characters of a story like snow white and seven dwarfts. She made some non moveable characters then found problem how to represent it. Slowly we came to face different aspect of puppetry. Whenever she asks me something I have to answer, “Beta, I don’t know more than you ”. With experience she learnt that we are still on the stage of A,B,C…need to learn more for big plan.

Then selected a story of three billy goats and she made three different sized goats from card paper, a troll and a bridge and represented story. But still needed something more…..moving characters!

We have seen movie “Kathputli”…though movie has few scene where can see puppet, Megh liked that kathputli song and picked up himself how they make puppets dance and sound related to it. He enjoys entertaining us by imitating kathputli.

We want puppet with speech and action now. We made glove and string puppets. Megh presents show with glove puppet without story. Ashna happy with her string puppets and in search of making simple story, song or jokes. Dreaming new kind of puppet and puppet theatre everyday…it’s like mania, always in thoughts of puppets. I am trying for arranging puppet workshop. Let’s see but right now we are learning, experimenting and enjoying puppets.