HOW REAL SHOULD A PUPPET BE?
This question has intrigued various people for a long time. Art is the celebration of life. It is a technique, an expression to celebrate the glory of today and to travel into tomorrow. The glory of a peacock is ornamented onto a block of stone more artistically th... more

HOW REAL SHOULD A PUPPET BE?
This question has intrigued various people for a long time. Art is the celebration of life. It is a technique, an expression to celebrate the glory of today and to travel into tomorrow. The glory of a peacock is ornamented onto a block of stone more artistically than the real because it is the image of the sculptor, as he sees it, as he feels for it. Thus art is usually the perception and the affective expression of the beauty and grandeur of the things around us.
Puppetry is also a vibrant form of art that not only shows but also sings the saga of the past while commenting on the present and predicting the future.
Puppet stories bring into the present, all those characters of the past. The characters become alive after ages but seem near to us. Ravana and Hanuman of the Ramayana days come into the 21st century and fight over issues of right and wrong in today’s concept, in their typical style. On the other hand, Prithviraj Chauhan goes to war with a king who is corrupt and does ‘bad’ for his kingdom. The coy and beautiful Shakuntala speaks of her right to choose her partner in love, displaying woman’s empowerment. Thus puppet stories never become old.
On the other hand, puppets are not real characters. They are the personated forms of feelings, things, etc. and are caricatures of characters. They are the symbols of characters as we perceive or wish to see. That’s why Ram is painted Blue or Black and Ravana Red or Green. Now here appears the crucial argument among various puppeteers whether a puppet should be real or a symbolic representation of the real.
One school of thought believes that puppets should be as realistic as possible. This can be seen in the various rod and string puppets of India. The other school of thought believes that a puppet should not be real because it is ‘NOT’ the real; it is a symbol of the real. The puppet is the extension of the puppeteer’s perception of that character. However, man tries he will not be able to replicate the beauty and the glory of the real from of an animal or a human. We can’t create what nature and/or god has to its perfection, so we should not do that to our puppets.
Thus many a puppeteers believe that their puppet character should be a stylized version or a caricature of the character. This can be seen in most of our old paintings and shadow puppets. The Bali puppets and Tholu Bommal of the south are good examples of this school of thought. Even Punch of the European lands is a caricature of a satirical, aggressive person, thus his nose is curved, and eyes carry an un-human look.
The same though extends to puppet movement and manipulation. The Rajasthani dancer can perform feasts that no real person can. The string jester is able to separate his head and fix it onto his leg. Thus, puppet movements need not be real as well.
Any art is the representation of life, a statement of its grandeur. We need not reduce its glory by copying it to the real but need to speak of its glory and our connotation of it.