The World Puppetry Day was celebrated amidst great enthusiasm and excitement by the Kolkata based internationally acclaimed puppetry group, the ‘Doll’s Theatre’ at the Madhusudan Mancha in South Kolkata on March 21, 2023. The program was attended by numerous kids and their parents representing different schools; who were excited and engaged as audience throughout the evening. These included heartwarming cheers, claps, laughter and giggles of little ones following every performance on the stage. The founder of Dolls Theatre, a national award winning master puppetry artist, Sudip Gupta delivered the welcome speech introducing his puppetry team performing the Italian fairytale, Pinocchio on stage.Acclaimed puppetry artist, Sreeparna Bhanja Gupta highlighted the future plans and projects to be undertaken by Doll’s Theatre. The first performance was enacted by a four member group – Not a Storyteller, titled ‘The fulfillment of the wishes of two birds’ adopted from the play ‘Parrot Story’ by the legendary Bengali literary giant, Rabindranath Tagore. The second and most important performance was by the Doll’s Theatre based on the famous Italian fairy tale ‘Pinocchio’ written by Carlo Collodi. The artistic performance, stage lighting, costumes, various puppets used, music and the direction was outstanding and made an impression among those that attended. Puppetry has been an ancient global art with the sole purpose of entertainment and education of the public through use of different forms and styles of puppets.
Unfortunately, like other traditional performing arts, puppetry is also losing steam to the rapidly expanding movie industry, OTT platforms, and various entertainment channels. With such an overwhelming pressure and consumption of the contemporary entertainment industry; traditional art practices like puppetry are witnessing their decline. There is great need for the successful development and promotion of our traditional values, practices and heritage like puppetry and it is our collective responsibility to conserve our deep rooted cultural heritage through our active support and engaging participation.
