What makes 72-year-old Lata Satagopan so enthusiastic about the usage of puppetry in training? Her sturdy trust that this can be a method neatly fitted to storytelling. And storytelling, in flip, is a good instrument of conversation. “Puppetry is a perfect instructional instrument for the 9-14-year age staff. A puppet isn’t just a doll or a toy. It has existence and will exchange a human,” she explains.
“A storyteller has the choice of the usage of undeniable narrative or combining it with a visible medium like drama or puppetry. In a undeniable narrative, the narrator needs to be very expressive with phrases and the youngsters have to grasp precisely what’s being stated. This working out is made more straightforward via the usage of puppets. In reality, I take advantage of talking puppets minimally. The message will have to come thru puppet play, the motion,” she explains.
Lata has been dedicated to cutting edge and socially related puppet-making for the previous 37 years, and has earned status in India and out of the country. She trains academics in puppetry in coaching schools in addition to establishments like Mt Carmel’s and Christ College in Bengaluru. Along, she conducts workshops for youngsters and adults alike to percentage her interest for puppetry.
Lata’s thematic puppet performances, performed each on-line and offline, imbibe the foundations of ‘theatre in training’ mixed with her follow of storytelling and scriptwriting. She makes use of those to gasoline her interest for reviving the artwork of storytelling thru puppetry, and has won a state award as an cutting edge puppetry trainer.
In the back of the display screen
Lata recollects that her interest for drama and literature advanced all over her faculty days in Bengaluru. With the toughen of her academics, she would arrange performs on subjects like international tradition, mime whole poems, and discover her faculty’s puppet theatre. As an introverted kid, she notes, she discovered it relaxing so as to talk from at the back of the display screen.
“An exhilarating duration at school existence was once when [English actor] Jennifer Kendal and her circle of relatives got here to our faculty to behavior workshops. We have been uncovered to Shakespearean theatre for 3 years. Since we have been a small staff, we were given the most productive of the interpersonal interplay,” relates Lata.
After finishing her BEd and MA in English, Lata turned into an English language trainer in Girls’s Peace League faculty, the place she taught for 12 years. She would get actively excited by staging performs on the faculty, which she loved. Publicity to drama early in existence had modified her idea procedure. As a trainer, it made her need to take a look at out new issues.
‘How I turned into a puppeteer’
The turning level in her existence and profession got here when she was once requested to constitute her faculty and the state of Karnataka at a 45-day puppetry coaching programme held in Shillong in 1986. The programme was once organised via NCERT (Nationwide Council of Instructional Analysis and Coaching), New Delhi.
This was once her first publicity to the outdoor international. There have been round 100 academics from all portions of the rustic, and the theme was once nationwide integration, through which individuals learnt patriotic songs.
“It was once an relaxing revel in. I used to be uncovered to puppeteers from other areas and we might trade our abilities and stories of coaching. Well-known puppeteers have been our mentors.”
“After the programme, I won a certificates that said that I have been skilled within the ‘instructional use of puppetry’. Individuals needed to come again and unfold the message of integration of their states. With out understanding it, I have been selected as a useful resource individual in puppetry for the dept of training,” says Lata. Therefore, she has attended meetings and introduced papers for NCERT.
Tapping into your ‘inside kid’
In keeping with Lata, making puppets and taking part in puppetry presentations improves conversation, interpersonal, literacy and motor abilities of kids. Additionally it is healing because it faucets into the ‘inside kid’, and hones each inventive and demanding considering abilities.
“Getting excited by puppetry brings about sure behavioural adjustments and improves socialisation as neatly,” asserts Lata.
As an academic instrument, puppetry additionally makes studying extra fascinating for youngsters, and develops statement abilities in youngsters. “This media is robust as a result of the visualisation concerned, the motion or motion, and as it facilitates language construction,” she explains.
Two tendencies have given a spice up to puppetry in India. In line with the Nationwide Schooling Coverage 2020, which implies experiential studying (studying via doing an job) for all age teams, the Central Executive has advanced a toy-based pedagogy to assist faculty youngsters within the age staff of three to 18 years perceive elementary ideas of science and arithmetic, in addition to broaden sensory and motor abilities. Along blocks, puzzles, mask and sand artwork, puppets are for use as equipment via faculties to show youngsters.
Any other construction that Lata opines augurs neatly for the way forward for puppetry in India is that the artwork has been integrated within the BEd curriculum for the previous few years. “I used to be requested to deal with 100 scholars who had enrolled for the BEd route 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 themes of the puppetry presentations are typically socially related equivalent to private hygiene, Swachch Bharat, well being problems, neighborhood dwelling, nationwide integration, behaviour of kids all over COVID, profession counselling and steerage, and messages to offer protection to the surroundings.
For writing scripts round those, Lata additionally comes to the youngsters. She has ready matter kits with puppets for subjects like shapes, rainbow colors, meals chain, Swachch Bharat, and nationwide integration.
Every now and then, Lata plays presentations in response to books. She has created puppet performances in response to the ‘The Little Pink Rooster’, ‘3 Little Pigs’, ‘Birbal’s Khichdi’ and at the tale of Christmas, to call a couple of.
She narrates a captivating incident. “We have been staging the tale of the lion and the rabbit and the way the rabbit escapes via outwitting the lion. Within the conventional tale the lion falls into the neatly and dies. However, in a twist within the story, the youngsters determined that they sought after to show the lion a lesson however didn’t need him to die. So, of their finishing, the lion emerged from the neatly feeling repentant.” Even Lata didn’t know of this variation!
‘Pleasure and that means’
Whilst there are lots of types of puppetry, Lata specialises in ‘glove puppets’, the place the relationship between the puppeteer and the puppets is nearer. When she is giving an illustration on puppetry, she additionally presentations how string, spoon and leather-based puppets are used. Other power ranges are wanted relying at the taste of puppetry, she says.
“Puppets are recurrently made from paper, thermocol and fabric. I take advantage of home made paper and, consequently, the puppets have lasted through the years despite put on and tear because of utilization via youngsters,” says Lata.
She additionally likes combining songs with storytelling, which makes her presentations extra interactive, because the target audience can sing alongside. Each and every efficiency calls for a practice session of a most of 3 days. Every now and then, she carries a makeshift display screen along with her. At others, she improvises at the set with tables and sheets. She has to make a choice the best indoor position as voices gained’t elevate within the open.
“In 1992, we needed to carry out on the Visvesvaraya museum at the subject of area. I used to be questioning find out how to display stars or a rocket fly. We have been helped via the museum workforce to organize a slide display that ran in parallel with the puppet display. This was once an innovation that has helped me on a large number of events. I used it once I helped a gaggle of kids post a puppetry display at a neighborhood programme on infectious sicknesses at St John’s Scientific School,” narrates Lata.
Recorded voices aren’t utilized in puppetry, as are living voices make the efficiency extra attractive. However Lata has offered recorded song in some performances as a substitute of are living orchestra.
“Puppetry brings pleasure and that means to my existence in numerous techniques. I’m sharing my very own interest with others. I’m repeatedly innovating and being extra inventive. For example, I’m now excited by the usage of puppetry to introduce other forms of mask in India. My paintings comes to numerous analysis, which I really like doing. I additionally really feel I’m contributing to popularising the ability of puppetry. Karnataka is known for puppetry, however has no longer won enough reputation. Alongside the way in which, I’m encouraging new puppetry artists,” she says.
Edited via Divya Sethu; Picture credit: Lata Satagopan