Sphoorthi Theatre

When asked to name the Puppeteers or puppet practitioners from Maharashtra, you get to hear only the present-day well-known practitioners like Meena Naik - an Indian actress, director, writer, and puppeteer from Mumbai or Ramdas Padhye - an Indian ventriloquist, puppeteer, and puppet-maker who has 40 plus years of experience. Little when further interrogated then  about Shri Vishnu Das Bhave -and Ganpat Sakhram Masge (Sangeet Natak Academy Awardee 2005)-the traditional puppeteers (can also refer to my previous blog post on “Kalasutri Bahuliya and Chamdyacha Bahuliya-traditional puppet forms of Maharashtra” Shri Vishnu Das Bhave well known as the father of Marathi Theatre is a multi-facet personality-Engineer, poet, puppeteer, and scrupulous crafts man.  Got to know in one of the theatre conferences that the 150 years old puppets of Vishnu Das Bhave traveled to Mr. Ramdas Padhye through a  known source for the rev...

Tamasha is a traditional Marathi folk art form. It includes both singing and dancing forms. It is widely performed theatre groups within the state of Maharashtra, India. It is in fact a mobile theatre that goes to different regions of Maharashtra. The word ‘Tamasha’ is Persian origin meaning ‘to have fun or to play’. Today, this word is commonly used in Hindi, Marathi, Kannada and Urdu. Again, some have researched the origin of the word Tamasha to Turkish langaugeand has entered into urdu and finally borrowed from Urdu to Marathi. In Marathi the word Tamasha means 'A mixtures of specialized performances like dance, music, different enactements or roles by women or girls, participation of women, and singing lavanis'. I wonder how Persian or Turkish languages have influence Marathi. This folk art from is so very deep rooted in rural Maharashtra for more than eight-nine centuries that it is quite difficult to say when this Tamasha was first staged. This art form is cal...