Ishara International Puppet Theatre Festival turns 20: Dadi Pudumjee on pulling the right strings

Sarika Sharma

‘Ramayana’ is being played out through shadow puppets across the stage at Tagore Theatre in Chandigarh. Two eager kids, a girl in white frock and a boy in red sweater, are too close to the stage. “Auntie! Look, Hanuman!” the boy yells. The lady shushes him, but the artistes don’t mind. At the Ishara International Puppet Theatre Festival, they never do. In fact, once the performance is over, the young ones are invited on stage to click photos with the puppets and artistes. It has been so for 19 editions now. The 20th is underway.

Dadi Pudumjee, director of the Ishara Puppet Theatre Trust, recalls the first edition. “We started in 2001. It was a three-four day festival then. We had just one international group; the rest were Indian. But a start was made, and slowly, it grew,” he says. Over the years, the venue has remained the same — India Habitat Centre in Delhi. For the last eight years, the Chandigarh Administration and the Tagore Theatre Society have been hosting it too.

“When we started, we were not sure if people would come to a ticketed show. Our trustees were insistent that there has to be a ticket, even if the charge is nominal.” The festival is held in February, for five to eight days, depending upon the number of groups. This time, it’s even bigger.

From Bulgaria to Taiwan, Hungary to Spain and Iran to Afghanistan… by virtue of his training in Stockholm and the presidentship of World Puppet Organisation, the Union Internationale de la Marionette (UNIMA), in 2008, Pudumjee has been instrumental in bringing the best of puppet theatre to the festival since early on. Today, most groups come on their own steam; only a few of them are sponsored by their ministries. “The festival has earned a lot of goodwill. Every year, 20-25 groups apply, and we have to turn down so many requests. Sometimes, we lose out on very good groups because we don’t pay for the travel. We only provide local hospitality and honorarium,” Pudumjee says.

But money isn’t the only constraint. Ishara has to see if performances would suit a wide spectrum of audience. “The shows should fit into the bracket of family performance because it isn’t just kids who attend, adults come too. We also have to see what groups can perform at our main venue, the amphitheatre at IHC. We have to look for less technical groups that can easily go to schools for performing; the number of artistes in a show….”

A one-of-its-kind festival to play out in the country, it brings together different styles of puppetry. “Even in the modern shows, there are conventional stories, something avant garde, fun shows, those with a heavy meaning.” The only other festival being consistently organised is by Bengaluru-based Anupama Hoskere since 2014. She was honoured with the Padma Shri recently; Pudumjee received it in 2011.

The puppet theatre festival has travelled to Jaipur, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai in the past and this year, it travels to Tripura once the Delhi festival ends. A few years ago, it found a regular partner in the Chandigarh Administration and the Tagore Theatre Society. “They take four shows every year, but this time we are taking five productions. Chandigarh has been a steadfast collaborator. It is full house each time,” he says. In Delhi, the festival opened on February 16. The Chandigarh festival opened on Saturday with ‘Petrushka’, which brought Russia’s most famous puppet character to life in its most colourful avatar ever.

Ishara’s own show is a take on ‘The Ugly Duckling’. The duckling leaves home and meets a series of animals, each of them having their own pride, caste, hierarchy, size. It promises to be a rich showcase with its puppets being crafted from regional textiles. “The textiles have been chosen after the area which is the main habitat of the animals.” And hence there will be an ikat tiger, a Phulkari murgha, an elephant in kalamkari. The duck eventually takes a leap of faith and flies. The show is titled ‘Be Yourself’.

The adage, however, would not apply to the traditional puppet theatre. Pudumjee feels Indian puppetry needs to take its own leap of faith. “They need to find more stories; they need dramatisation; they need exposure, workshops.” Himself trained under the legendary puppetry artiste Meher Contractor, Pudumjee was a guest student at Marionette Theatre Institute in Stockholm under Michael Meschke. It pains him to see that there are no puppetry schools in India. He says puppet theatre seeks an active role of the government. “Perhaps by sponsoring traditional artistes’ visit to international shows or taking foreign groups to traditional puppetry artistes,” says Pudumjee. “We can’t do it alone. That is why we are very happy with Chandigarh; they religiously accept our festival.”

Things are changing in traditional theatre, too. “The young are trying new stories, new technology of making puppets, new materials, increased role of graphics, digital media…” he lists, but cautions that these experiments are few and far between. This yawning gap has turned their focus towards training.

Even if the government is not enthusiastic, the practitioners are. Year after year, Ishara and Teamwork Arts have been managing without any sponsors — selling tickets, roping in schools, pitching in themselves… He wants to take more shows to schools and go beyond ‘Red Riding Hoods’ and ‘Cindrellas’; to visit more cities; and to map another 20 years, perhaps.

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