What makes 72-year-old Lata Satagopan so enthusiastic about utilizing puppetry in training? Her sturdy perception that it’s a method properly suited to storytelling. And storytelling, in flip, is an efficient instrument of communication. “Puppetry is a perfect instructional instrument for the 9-14-year age group. A puppet isn’t just a doll or a toy. It has life and might change a human,” she explains.
“A storyteller has the choice of utilizing plain narrative or combining it with a visible medium like drama or puppetry. In a plain narrative, the narrator needs to be very expressive with phrases and the youngsters have to grasp precisely what’s being mentioned. This understanding is made simpler by utilizing puppets. In actual fact, I exploit talking puppets minimally. The message ought to come via puppet play, the motion,” she explains.
Lata has been dedicated to modern and socially related puppet-making for the previous 37 years, and has earned reputation in India and overseas. She trains academics in puppetry in coaching schools in addition to establishments like Mt Carmel’s and Christ College in Bengaluru. Alongside, she conducts workshops for youngsters and adults alike to share her ardour for puppetry.
Lata’s thematic puppet performances, performed each on-line and offline, imbibe the rules of ‘theatre in training’ mixed along with her follow of storytelling and scriptwriting. She makes use of these to gasoline her ardour for reviving the artwork of storytelling via puppetry, and has acquired a state award as an modern puppetry instructor.
Behind the display screen
Lata remembers that her ardour for drama and literature developed throughout her faculty days in Bengaluru. With the assist of her academics, she would arrange performs on subjects like world tradition, mime whole poems, and discover her faculty’s puppet theatre. As an introverted baby, she notes, she discovered it gratifying to have the ability to communicate from behind the display screen.
“An thrilling interval in class life was when [English actor] Jennifer Kendal and her household got here to our faculty to conduct workshops. We have been uncovered to Shakespearean theatre for 3 years. Since we have been a small group, we received the very best of the interpersonal interplay,” relates Lata.
After finishing her BEd and MA in English, Lata grew to become an English language instructor in Ladies’s Peace League faculty, the place she taught for 12 years. She would get actively concerned in staging performs on the faculty, which she loved. Publicity to drama early in life had modified her thought course of. As a instructor, it made her need to check out new issues.
‘How I grew to become a puppeteer’
The turning level in her life and profession got here when she was requested to symbolize her faculty and the state of Karnataka at a 45-day puppetry coaching programme held in Shillong in 1986. The programme was organised by NCERT (Nationwide Council of Instructional Analysis and Coaching), New Delhi.
This was her first publicity to the skin world. There have been round 100 academics from all elements of the nation, and the theme was nationwide integration, whereby individuals learnt patriotic songs.
“It was an gratifying expertise. I used to be uncovered to puppeteers from totally different areas and we’d change our expertise and experiences of coaching. Well-known puppeteers have been our mentors.”
“After the programme, I acquired a certificates that said that I had been educated within the ‘instructional use of puppetry’. Individuals needed to come again and unfold the message of integration of their states. With out figuring out it, I had been chosen as a useful resource individual in puppetry for the division of training,” says Lata. Subsequently, she has attended conferences and introduced papers for NCERT.
Tapping into your ‘interior baby’
Based on Lata, making puppets and taking part in puppetry reveals improves communication, interpersonal, literacy and motor expertise of kids. It is usually therapeutic because it faucets into the ‘interior baby’, and hones each artistic and demanding pondering expertise.
“Getting concerned in puppetry brings about optimistic behavioural modifications and improves socialisation as properly,” asserts Lata.
As an academic instrument, puppetry additionally makes studying extra fascinating for youngsters, and develops statement expertise in youngsters. “This media is highly effective due to the visualisation concerned, the motion or motion, and since it facilitates language improvement,” she explains.
Two developments have given a lift to puppetry in India. In accordance with the National Education Policy 2020, which suggests experiential studying (studying by doing an exercise) for all age teams, the Central Authorities has developed a toy-based pedagogy to assist faculty youngsters within the age group of three to 18 years perceive primary ideas of science and arithmetic, in addition to develop sensory and motor expertise. Alongside blocks, puzzles, masks and sand artwork, puppets are for use as instruments by colleges to show youngsters.
One other improvement that Lata opines augurs properly for the way forward for puppetry in India is that the artwork has been included within the BEd curriculum for the previous few years. “I used to be requested to deal with 100 college students who had enrolled for the BEd course with regards to puppetry. We made puppets out of newspaper. Puppetry can be utilized to show English, arithmetic, science and social research,” she says.
Twist endings, creativity unleashed
The subjects of the puppetry reveals are normally socially related reminiscent of private hygiene, Swachch Bharat, well being points, neighborhood dwelling, nationwide integration, behaviour of kids throughout COVID, profession counselling and steering, and messages to guard the surroundings.
For writing scripts round these, Lata additionally includes the youngsters. She has ready topic kits with puppets for subjects like shapes, rainbow colors, meals chain, Swachch Bharat, and nationwide integration.
At instances, Lata performs reveals primarily based on books. She has created puppet performances primarily based on the ‘The Little Purple Hen’, ‘Three Little Pigs’, ‘Birbal’s Khichdi’ and on the story of Christmas, to call a couple of.
She narrates an fascinating incident. “We have been staging the story of the lion and the rabbit and the way the rabbit escapes by outwitting the lion. Within the conventional story the lion falls into the properly and dies. However, in a twist within the story, the youngsters determined that they wished to show the lion a lesson however didn’t need him to die. So, of their ending, the lion emerged from the properly feeling repentant.” Even Lata didn’t know of this transformation!
‘Pleasure and which means’
Whereas there are a lot of types of puppetry, Lata specialises in ‘glove puppets’, the place the connection between the puppeteer and the puppets is nearer. When she is giving an illustration on puppetry, she additionally reveals how string, spoon and leather-based puppets are used. Completely different power ranges are wanted relying on the fashion of puppetry, she says.
“Puppets are generally made from paper, thermocol and material. I exploit handmade paper and, in consequence, the puppets have lasted through the years regardless of put on and tear as a result of utilization by youngsters,” says Lata.
She additionally likes combining songs with storytelling, which makes her reveals extra interactive, because the viewers can sing alongside. Every efficiency requires a rehearsal of a most of three days. At instances, she carries a makeshift display screen along with her. At others, she improvises on the set with tables and sheets. She has to pick out the fitting indoor place as voices received’t carry within the open.
“In 1992, we needed to carry out on the Visvesvaraya museum on the subject of area. I used to be questioning learn how to present stars or a rocket fly. We have been helped by the museum staff to organize a slide present that ran in parallel with the puppet present. This was an innovation that has helped me on quite a few events. I used it once I helped a gaggle of kids put up a puppetry present at a neighborhood programme on infectious ailments at St John’s Medical Faculty,” narrates Lata.
Recorded voices will not be utilized in puppetry, as stay voices make the efficiency extra participating. However Lata has launched recorded music in some performances as a substitute of stay orchestra.
“Puppetry brings pleasure and which means to my life in a number of methods. I’m sharing my very own ardour with others. I’m consistently innovating and being extra artistic. For example, I’m now concerned in utilizing puppetry to introduce totally different sorts of masks in India. My work includes a number of analysis, which I like doing. I additionally really feel I’m contributing to popularising the talent of puppetry. Karnataka is known for puppetry, however has not acquired ample recognition. Alongside the best way, I’m encouraging new puppetry artists,” she says.
Edited by Divya Sethu; Picture credit: Lata Satagopan
