• NET Web Desk

Commemorating the ‘World Puppetry Day’, the Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA), an autonomous body of the Ministry of Culture is collaboration with the Tripura Puppet Theatre (TPT) is all set to host the ‘Putul Utsav’ – a puppet festival at Muktadhara Auditorium in Agartala today from 12 PM.

This one-day event themed on “Azadi ke Rang, Putul Ke Sang” will be observed as part of the 75th years of Independence; and narrating tales of India’s struggle for freedom through the medium of puppets.

The festival will open with a puppet dance performance on the theme of ‘Rani Laxmibai’ to recreate the valour and love of freedom of the legendary fighter-queen who had fought the Britishers during the Sepoy mutiny of 1857.

Besides, this will be followed by a puppet dance on environmental pollution titled ‘Dushan Mukta Parivesh’.

While,the last item will be based on the life and devotion of mythological king ‘Raja Harishchandra’, an episode in the epic ‘Mahabharata’. ‘Rani Laxmibai’ will be presented afresh by Tripura Puppet Theatre in the evening at 6:30 PM.

This festival commencing from today, will be celebrated by various events in five different cities – Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh), Hyderabad (Telangana), Angul district (Odisha), New Delhi and Agartala (Tripura).

According to the Secretary of SNA – Ms Temsunaro Jamir, puppet theatre is still popular in India, and Putul Utsav will give it a fresh lease on life by introducing a new generation of spectators to traditional puppetry, an intangible cultural legacy of India.

Since time immemorial, the art of puppetry has been an intercultural theatre tradition, used as a medium of communication, education, and enjoyment. Puppetry has a long history in India, and one can find its mention along the historical Indian literature such as the second-century treatise on play, Natyashastra, and the Tamil work Silpaddikaram.

Puppetry was traditionally a temple-based art form, with narrative themes drawn from puranic literature, mythology, epics, and local tales.

Its worthy to note that the idea of ‘World Puppetry Day’ came from the puppet theater artist Javad Zolfaghari from Iran. In 2000 at the XVIII Congress of the Union Internationale de la Marionnette, (UNIMA) in Magdeburg, Javad made the proposal for discussion.

However, just 2 years later, at a meeting of the International Council of UNIMA in June 2002 at Atlanta, the date of the celebration was identified; and the first celebration was observed in 2003.