HYDERABAD: World Folklore Day, celebrated on August 22, reminds us of our cultural heritage and the need to preserve and share it with upcoming generations. CE interacted with students of Oxford Grammar School, Himayath Nagar, where puppetry has been added to the curriculum, to explore what they learned from this old folk art.
On the occasion of World Folklore Day, we asked a few students of Oxford Grammar School, which has incorporated puppetry in its curriculum, to share their experiences of connecting with traditional art forms and the impact it has made on their lives. Students of grade IX, J Ridhima Reddy, Makireddy Bhaumik SVNL Naidu, Sai Smarani Mudhuolkar, S Sai Manvith, Balaji Naik and Jainam Jain were part of the first batch that had an opportunity to learn from folk researcher and storyteller Padmini Rangarajan. They share their learnings with CE.
Breaking into a story they performed as a group, Ridhima narrated 31 dosas in just one breath. “A woman makes 31 dosas for her husband and saves only one for him. She is then asked by her husband where the dosas went, she says she ate them. He asks how. She says, ‘Like that’ and enacts eating dosas. We learned many things by being part of the puppetry course. The most important of all is teamwork,” she said.
While remembering one’s roots and traditions associated with one’s native place are relived through folk, art forms like puppetry also imbibe a skill set in children that remain with them for a lifetime. Being grateful to their school for giving them this opportunity, all 13-year-olds said they thoroughly enjoyed being part of this course. “Of course, a break from the regular classes,” said Smarani. “It was a great experience for me. I learned so many things about puppets from our teacher. It was interesting to see how we could handle different kinds of puppets by the end of the course, for example, rod puppets, hand puppets, shadow puppets, etc,” she added.
Students were also exposed to Dutch puppetry forms when puppeteer Frans Hakkemars visited the school and conducted a workshop. Besides, the children also got the opportunity to perform at the Dhaatu puppet festival in Bengaluru, where storytellers from various parts of the country had come to perform. “I was enchanted by the way some performers from Udaipur handled string puppets. I wanted to learn from them,” said Jainam Jain. “How to enact a story with the puppets, how to fix the puppets’ faces, how to dress up the puppets and cutouts in the black zone which we were using in shadow puppets, bending while performing, all these things were unknown to us before we started learning puppetry,” he added.
“I had been interested in puppets since grade I,” said Bhaumik. I used to see some cartoon shows where they controlled puppets through strings. As part of the course, our teacher told us some techniques to control these puppets. I enjoyed it a lot. The main thing was that we learnt how to coordinate with our teammates. Ours and the upcoming generations will be more focused on gadgets and social media. I would like to spread these traditional folk arts all over the world so that they do not lose their charm,” he said.
As we dived deeper into the impact puppetry as a traditional art form had on the lives of these children, they navigated through their memories and experiences to give us the best of their learnings. “Puppetry helps in character development,” said Sai Manvith. On being asked to clarify, he took a small pause to really reflect on what ‘character’ means. “I think it is our image. It helps us learn new skills that we can use in a totally different environment later,” he explained.
As students learned ‘manipulation techniques’, dealing with others remained an important concept, specifically, peer learning. “My seven-year-old sister, she is my cousin actually. When we were performing at NTR Gardens, she had come to watch the show. She observed us carefully and learned time management from it,” said Sai. “She saw how we used our time on stage to perform and move things around to change the settings simultaneously and then went back and replicated the whole thing in her school play as well,” he said.
Sai further added that once the course was done and the final performance watched by all, many of his classmates were curious to learn how to manage the puppets.
Another aspect of reconnecting with old art forms relevant in the present day and age is its connection with digital media. We asked students how they see this connection. “Social media isn’t a synchronous platform. The users can change the content and interact with the content at their own convenience. There is no physical contact. With puppetry and any other art form, the difference is, it’s a direct interaction with the audience. The puppeteer would be in direct contact with a live audience, which is a much more enriching experience,” said Sai.
Adding to the character development part, Balaji Naik said that storytelling helps in building confidence and public speaking while also working as a perfect stress buster. At this point, almost everyone seemed to agree that studying is stressful and puppetry, a break from it.
“It’s like we are immersed in this different world of fantasy and can forget the real world for some time,” he added. “My stage fear went away,” pitched in Ridhima. “I would be shivering on stage. Now, I am just really good at it and it gives me the confidence I always needed,” she said.
The teacher, Padmini Rangarajan, runs ‘Sphoorthi’, an educational theatre platform and also writes regularly on her blog on topics related to folk art forms of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. “Folk is not a fashion trend that you can follow today and discard another day. The question is what impact do you make on the art and the artiste? What have you done to revive the art form and support the livelihood of the performer? There are many who write endless research papers on various art forms but without giving them due credit,” she said.
On being asked how is folk relevant in the era of digital media, she said, “The best thing about social media is global outreach. Recently, the Tamilians in the US got in touch with Tamil Nadu’s cultural department and arranged for some artistes to travel to the US and perform there. Can something like this not be done by our government?” she questioned. While there are some which have now come into the limelight, there are many other art forms that need to be documented.
She has faith in the efforts made by different communities to preserve and revive their folk traditions but said that a lot more needs to be done so that folk artistes get more visibility and attention from the audiences. “As far as this course is concerned, I want students to learn and continue sharing these skills with their younger schoolmates. The art form should persist,” she concluded.