Prabhitangshu Das, who heads the Tripura Puppet Theatre Group, is at the forefront of preserving the craft in his state. From making children smarter to creating social change, there’s much to be gained from puppetry, he believes.
Every fourth Saturday of the month, the terrace of 54-year-old puppeteer Prabhitangshu Das’s home near Agartala’s Netaji Chowmuhani locality, is transformed into a lively puppet theatre. Children can be seen rehearsing till 10 pm, after they are through with their studies for the day.
The terrace is a flurry of activity, from crafting colourful props, learning to manoeuvre puppets, and rehearsing dialogues to writing scripts. Through it all, Prabhitangshu handholds each of his 10 students.
“Parents believe that learning puppetry has strengthened their children’s cognitive skills as they are scoring better in school,” says Prabhitangshu, who is a master of four forms of puppetry, namely rod, string, glove and shadow.
These classes, where the children learn to divide a puppet into seven sections, carry on for 20 days of the month. They create the head, leg and hand of the puppet separately, before integrating these parts together. They are taught other intricacies too, such as ensuring that the shadow of one part of the puppet is not cast on the shadow of another. Or that the hands and legs do not move together.
This mentoring, which began on March 24, 2024, is a part of the Guru Shiksha Parampara scheme under the Sangeet Natak Academy, where Prabhitangshu was selected to nurture young talent to pursue a slowly vanishing art form.
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Puppetry was brought into the state from Bangladesh, by Prabhitangshu’s late father, Haripada Das, in 1974. “There was a dol (group) in Tripura which would play flutes made of leaves, sing songs and move the puppets. There were no dialogues then,” Prabhitangshu recalls.
Haripada worked with the Tripura government’s social education department and roamed the villages of the state, screening documentaries to educate the masses on socially relevant topics. It eventually dawned on him to use puppetry to do so. He asked for help from the government, which appointed three puppeteers for the job.
Haripada would write 10-minute scripts and work on teaching villagers to fight against social evils through puppetry performed by the three-member team. “He was the first to introduce dialogue in puppetry in Northeast India. All this began in 1956,” explains Prabhitangshu.
Later, Haripada sought the state’s intervention to help upgrade his art form by interweaving contemporary techniques. But, with no budget forthcoming, he decided to form his own troupe, which went by the name Tripura Amateur Puppet Group, in 1987. The group went on to become the ’Tripura Puppet Theatre’. The reins were passed on to his son after Haripada’s death in 1999.
This is when Prabhitangshu began to engage school dropouts to pitch in for the performances. “I was always keen to teach the next generation about this craft,” Prabhitansu says.
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More recently, the Tripura Puppet Theatre Group has used the medium of puppetry to educate the public about pressing issues such as Covid-19 and the use of vaccines to prevent it. They also do this by releasing YouTube videos of their puppetry. This is how they also deliver messages on cybersecurity, AIDS, tuberculosis and the Swachh Bharat campaign.
“We charge a minimal rate from NGOs for such performances. We even do the shows for free as we consider social work our responsibility,” says Prabhitangshu.
The theatre group has translated works of Rabindranath Tagore such as Bishorjon, Chandalika, Aparijita, Chattrer Porikha, and songs such as Srabaner Dhara Moto into puppet shows. In September, Prabhitangshu and his troupe were at the Purba Noabadi village, performing a show on social maladies such as girls not being educated, domestic violence and other social evils like alcoholism.
Because opportunities for puppeteers are few and far between in Agartala, unlike larger metropolitan cities like Kolkata, Prabhitangshu has taken on a job as a programme officer with the local Doordarshan centre. It’s not possible to sustain yourself on this craft alone, he rues, and seeks to create more opportunities for the next generation of puppeteers so that they don’t need to do other jobs.
Despite the hardships, he says he derives a lot of joy from mentoring younger students. For instance, one of them wanted to present a school project on shadow puppets.
I think you can measure the success of one’s training when students come up with such innovative ideas. It’s a wonderful way to educate others about puppetry
says Prabhitangshu, who is striving to keep the craft relevant.
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The lead image on top depicts a puppet show in progress by Prabhitangshu Das’s proteges. (Photo by Prabhitangshu Das)
Aatreyee Dhar is an independent journalist based out of Assam.
