Dhaatu Puppet Festival

The Dhaatu Puppet Festival is being held at different venues around Bangalore from May 7th to 16th.

Via Citizen Matters

Dhaatu is a non-profit organisation which began in 2004 with an aim to bring about awareness on the diverse traditions of puppetry, existing locally and nationally, and reinterpret the word ‘tradition’ for urban audiences.

It has often been the case that ‘Traditional’ is made parallel to ‘Rural’ and therefore considered in some way beneath urban consumption. Speaking strongly for the use of puppet theatre in value education programs, Anupama Hoskere, founder and active member of Dhaatu said that what began as a passion for puppetry became a journey of discovery, a happy journey that Dhaatu wishes to share with its audiences. Her husband, Vidya Shankar Hoskere, who also spoke a few words, said that art of all forms help us celebrate life, and puppetry is one such art form.

The ten-day festival will have presentations from the Dhaatu senior and junior teams, and artistes coming from Bangalore, Chennai, Trissur, Mumbai and other parts of Karnataka. The types of puppets will range from shadow, rod and string puppets to marionettes, glove puppets and contemporary puppets with programs at venues across the city including Yavanika, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Freedom Park, Cubbon Park, Seva Sadan Malleshwaram, Suchitra Cine & Cultural Academy.

Speaking of the future of puppetry Anupama mentioned that an interesting part of this festival will be a presentation by Professor Dinesh, IISC (CEDT) Bangalore on ‘Robotic Puppetry’. The introduction of programming and state of the art memory joy sticks can actually create a system wherein puppet movements can be stored and restored at the jerk of a joy stick, a technology that can be used to orchestrate puppets in different parts of the world at the same time.

Read the entire article here and you can view the schedule of events here.