My Experiences of Puppetry Training for Azampura Government High School Students

I often recollected famous "Geethe syllabus- one of the lyrics by TThe Great Sri Purandardasa-- goes like this" Kereya neranu Kerege Chali" in Mayamalava Goula Raaga (I think I am right!!!???). "Kere' in Kannada Language means Pond or a lake. I also wonder, why should we throw the pond water back in the pond- as the meaning of the first line goes. I think, the pond water should be reaching the people who are thirsty for this water. Not that giving water or wasting water. Well, this is how I interrupt the meaning. I may be wrong and may be Sri Purandara Dasa  means it differently.  I infact like his compositions very much.  I always wanted to reach to the needy in whatever way. May be that was one of the reasons for my Puppet Presentation. Addressing essential common issues of commoners from Indian Society.  One such being Practice of Early Girl Child Marriage in Indian Society. I could see this practice more prevalent among poor and uneducated   people.

Well, my small attempt is to sustain Puppetry art form of India, although I am not a traditional puppeteer coming from a puppeteers family as such. Yet my attempt as a social thinker, educationist and art  lover, I am experimenting the better application of this art form called "APPLIED PUPPETRY", be it in teaching academics with concepts of MATHS, SCIENCE, HISTORY or LANGUAGE.   During this venture, the need to address still existing practice of Early Girl Child Marriage began to roll in my mind. I just determined and worked out the cost and Script for the same. Again, this was my full length project that I undertook to address in rural areas in TELUGU language (Language of Andhra Pradesh).

The second thought was to train the nearby government school students in manipulating the puppets. So, I selected Azampur Government High School students-all together eight students-Four girls and Four boys for one week.

On the first day of training programme, I gave them the story and dialogue script to these students to go through. However, they put the script papers aside.  Especially boys were quite busy operating two-two mobile handsets and going out with lame excuses and wasting time in chit-chatting and so on. Of course, the girls were sitting in my training studio, by engaging in pretty girlish kinds of talk and so on.

After some time, I just popped from at a corner and started my usual brainstorming games to get all their attentions towards me. They responded well and that's how I started to talk to them about Indian, rich culture, tradition, folk arts, Puppetry and so on.

On the second day, I started my discussion on various social problems, issues and solution for the same. They came out with excellent answers and also suggestions and some even expressed about their inability to understand. Slowly I introduced my puppet project, concept, and addressing it through puppetry.

Then, I made them to listen to the audio of the puppet play "Nannu Chaduvinchannadi" meaning allow me to study or support me for gaining an education. Then I demonstrated enactment of being PUPPETS. This exercise did give them some physical exercise and also learnt the movements and space of movements. Then I introduced my puppets and their characters. At once, each one of them grabbed it like a starving person and started identifying themselves with the characters.  Then, I exchanged  a few words on the importance of education and on "Ambition in Life".  I could observe tears rolling down from a couple of boy students. They later shared their experience of working as child labour, illiterate parents and exposed to social exploitation and evils and an early age.

Wow! Wonderful, is the PUPPET THERAPY!!!

With two-three repeated practices for almost three consecutive days gave them good confidence, time sense, and skills of puppet manipulating techniques.  Of course, though they experienced pain in their arms but still they did not want to give up.  During break, I could still see these students holding the puppets and moving with puppets. Slowly, this also gave spontaneity for them to enact on different issues connected with their life. --SCOPE FOR VENTILATION of the suppressed thoughts.

  I took these students to Ayyasgaram Kshetram, Amanagal mandal, Mahaboobnagar District and Torrur Mandal, Warangal District of Andhra Pradesh in the month of  March 21-22, 2012 and now recently they performed it at their school at Gaouli guda, Amberpet, Hyderabad on July 28, 2012 during Vicky Hart, Andy Hart and Prof Claudia's visit to Hyderabad.

They gave a spellbound performance in front of their schoolmates, teachers and parents.

Participants'names are Vani, Renuka, Meghana, Lavanya, Mahesh, Shiva, Venkatesh and Kiran  from class VIII of Azampur Government High School, Golnaka Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh.