Ranjani - Puppeteer in Delhi

Week 3 Report (28th May – 4th June)

I’ve already completed the 3rd week of my project, which means I have hit the midway mark. There seems to be a lot of work I still have to do! This week began with spending 2 afternoons at Sangeet Natak Akademi. I seem to have gone there so often that even the guards began to recognize me! But the objective was to see a few recordings of puppet plays that were at the SNA documentation centre. I saw four puppet plays completely – by Puran Bhatt; Katkatha; Pi Theatre; and Ishara puppets trust - and fast forwarded through a few others, just to go through a few styles in rod, shadow and string puppetry. They were all performed and recorded few years back during one of the Putulyatra, which is the annual SNA festival of puppetry. The experience was marvellous, as I had never seen puppet plays before and the way some of the groups had incorporated inanimate dolls into live theatre was nicer beyond what I expected/imagined! After seeing, and not just reading, about what puppet theatre was really like, there was a new spurt of zest in me to go meet a few other puppeteers.

So, I mailed Dadi Pudumjee, one of the legends in this field. He was extremely prompt, and next thing I knew, I was meeting him at his workshop/studio on 3rd June. His group is called Ishara Puppets trust. Despite doing plenty of homework before going to meet him, I must admit I was intimidated by his knowledge, experience and mastery over the art form. However, he was extremely helpful and patient with my questions and doubts and cooperated completely while I interviewed him. Some members of the Salaam Balak Trust (which has also used puppetry for a lot of their projects), who are currently working with Ishara Puppets trust for a UNESCO project, were present on that day to rehearse for a performance. I was allowed to stay while they practiced and even managed to take a few pictures. All in all, it was a good experience.

This week, I haven’t done too much work, but even the little I did was worth it.
I have been working on the directory and compiling other information, but that segment of my project hasn’t been going too well. Next week I plan to figure out a solution to that.
Also, all my research so far is a little jumbled up, with fragments of information from everywhere. So I’ll need to organize and sort that out.