Dancing puppets

The ninth edition of The Ishara International Puppet Festival, comes to town

How do you sell the “unsaleable”? No, this is not a question designed to outfox aspiring marketing graduates. It is what the Indonesian puppet theatre group PaperMoon intends to do. For a week from today, if you drop in at India Habitat Centre in the Capital, “Mau Apa” will be at her trestle table, seating passersby in the hot seat, finding out what they want from their lives and giving them something from her boxes.

After performing in the markets of New York and Indonesia, PaperMoon is now in Delhi as part of Ishara, the only international puppet festival in the country. In its ninth edition, Ishara has groups from Spain, Italy, Israel, the UK and Turkey performing, apart from Indonesia and India. “We might repeat a country but each year we try to give the audience a variety, in terms of performances,” says Dadi Pudumjee, founder of the Ishara Puppet Theatre Trust.

So this time, one of the highlights will be Spanish visual artiste and poet Joan Baixas, who has collaborated with the acclaimed Spanish surrealist Joan Miro, and his Terra Prenyada (Pregnant Earth). Conceived in 1996, Terra Prenyada will take viewers on a journey around the world. Baixas is also conducting a workshop for different artistes, from puppeteers to dancers.

There is also the Girovago Washer Family Theatre from Italy, which has performed for more than 25 years. At the end of its play Manoviva, the audience will get to interact with the puppets. Rain Bird, by Israel’s Train Theatre, combines the Japanese art of origami with story-telling, while traditional and modern shadow theatre come to life in The Garbage Monster from Turkey. The festival begins with Pudumjee’s own Anokhe Vastra, based on Hans Christian Andersen’s short story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.

“India is high on the artistes’ list,” says Pudumjee. “They are eager to perform here.” This is evident from the excited title of a blog post by PaperMoon: “Two days to go to India!”

India itself has a very old and strong puppetry tradition. Some even describe it as the birthplace of the art. Pudumjee’s love affair with this art form began when he was in school, when he received a puppet as a gift and started playing around with it. He set up the Ishara Puppet Theatre Trust in 1986.

Although the well-respected festival is in its ninth edition, it is an organisational struggle for Ishara. The group puts in most of the money for the festival itself. “Every year we wonder how we’ll do it and why we are doing it but we still go right ahead,” says Pudumjee with a laugh. Traditionally, puppetry has ranked low in the ranks of performance arts, coming well after music, dance and theatre. Recent, popular puppet shows on children’s television promise a modest revival, but there is scope to do much more. For this the government and the private sector need to increase support, says Pudumjee.

He looks forward to taking Ishara to other cities in the country, once the funds come through. In the meantime, if you happen to be in Delhi, stop by and find out what Mau Apa and the others have in store for you.

The Ishara International Puppet Festival, February 6-14, at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi and Epicentre, Gurgaon