I enjoyed Anurupa Roy's puppetry workshop at Seagull even though I could attend only one day.
We learnt about the different kinds of puppetry, such as the ones she used at her show the day before- shadow, cutouts, figures etc. Puppetry called ravanchitra is popular in South india. It is named after Ravan as Ram being divine, doesn't have a shadow! We collected objects from the roadside to see what they would look like when a overhead projector would be used to project them on screen. I picked up a chakri- a leftover firecracker from Diwali. It worked well as a snail when projected. We then composed small stories under a minute using the objects we had found, in groups of 5. A tattered cloth looked beautiful on the screen. So did flowers, water in a transparent bottle, a hairclip. It was fun to imagine, be children again. We then attempted to make puppets from transparencies, cardboard and paper. We had wire and thumbtacks to create joints for our puppets. We were given three stories to stage. First we had to create a visual storyboard. This let us know at a glance what props were required for a scene. The next day we were to introduce colour using cellophane. Sigh. I wish I could have attended the second day too. Ah well, at least I got a glimpse in another world.