Agartala: Tripura Puppet Theatre (TPT), a group of contemporary puppeteers active for the last fifty years in the state, with the support of Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA) has conducted puppetry classes to encourage young talents to get into the traditional art form.
Kinjal Bhattacharjee, Abhigyan Dey, and Tatsama Sarkar are among the ten children who are being mentored as the next generation of puppeteers under a programme sponsored by Sangeet Natak Akademi.
They may come from different age groups, but what brings them together is their common fondness for puppetry, a traditional form of creative art that seems to have lost its lustre with the advent of modern entertainment mediums for children.
Director of Tripura Puppet Theatre (TPT), Prabitanghsu Das, a Sangeet Natak Akademi awardee artist, said this is an opportunity for him to pass on the legacy to the next generation.
The Sangeet Natak Akademi recently joined hands with Tripura Puppet Theatre (TPT), Das and his team started mentoring children in 2022 in a personal capacity.
The Sangeet Natak Akademi selected Prabitanghsu Das as a mentor under its new Guru Shishya Parampara scheme and appointed him to shoulder the responsibility on their behalf.
During one of his evening puppet classes, Prabitanghsu Das said, "Once upon a time, traditional puppetry was very famous in Tripura, Assam and other parts of the North East region. The traditional string puppetry originated in Bangladesh and gradually made inroads in Assam and Tripura through cultural interactions between the people of these regions."
"With time, the puppetry lost its old lustre and the audience also began to fall. Which is why we have made attempts to make some modifications to the traditional methods and stylize them in a contemporary format. The founder of Tripura Puppet Theatre, late Haripada Das, started his efforts to make puppetry popular among the masses. Later, we took over the responsibility," Prabitanghsu said.
According to Das, the children's training programme was launched as a part of the golden jubilee celebration of Tripura Puppet Theatre in 2023.
"To pass on the legacy to the next generation, we have started training children in puppeteering. The reason is simple, this is an art form that ideally has children as its audience in the first place. When we go for stage performances, we see a lot of children come over there and show interest in this," Das said.
"In 2022, we started teaching puppetry to the children. They are taught the techniques of manipulation, puppet making and other production-related activities. In 2024 , which is our fifty year foundation, we thought we would work seriously with children for the next year. We have trained a number of children and on every second Sunday of the month, a production is staged by the children in the small performance space reserved for personal capacity in the TPT studio," Das said.
Das also mentioned that students performing puppetry on a regular basis is a rare-case scenario elsewhere in India.
"This is perhaps the first time in India where children are performing puppetry on a regular basis. We have started this year's class with ten children. On December 13, the last Union Minister of Culture, G Kishan Reddy, gave me the opportunity to serve as a Guru and train as many as ten children as an overall puppet performer. Since taking classes every day is not possible, we are conducting classes 20 days a month," he added.
The current batch of budding puppeteers has received wide appreciation after their performance at the recently held international puppet festival in Tripura and Shillong.
"The children trained here have performed in the international puppet festival held in Agartala. They have also performed at an event in Shillong. More children are willing to come but we have limited infrastructure. We will be able to accommodate another batch of fresh students by next year," he said.
The budding puppeteers also shared their experience working and learning new things at TPT Studio.
Puppet artist Kinjal Bhattacharjee said, "Since childhood, I used to see a lot of puppet shows. This drives me to learn the art form."
Tatsama Sarkar and Abhigyan Dey also have similar opinions. Tatsama Sarkar has been learning puppetry for the last year.
"I have learned puppet making, manipulation and several other things that are completely new to me," he added. He is also receiving training in classical signing. (ANI)
