In a detailed conversation about puppetry and puppet theatre, Sudip Gupta, Shreeparna Bhanja Gupta and Santanu Kundu talks about the form and its various associated aspects. They feel that puppetry’s immediate appeal is because of its ability to push all sorts of boundaries when it comes to performance, something similar to animation. Both these forms tend to make use of abstractions and metaphoric expressions in a direct manner, to the delight of the kids especially. However there is a serious dearth of both learning and even performing puppetry in West Bengal. The form is always relegated to something of a child’s play as opposed the other countries or even other states in India. Puppetry nonetheless has this magical attraction providing unadulterated entertainment transporting the audience into a realm of fantasy. Sudip Gupta further talks elaborately about the different forms of puppetry such as glove, rod, string and shadow while demonstrating their characteristics in detail. While he also talks about the Muppet created by Jim Hanson, he apparently differs with the usage of the term ‘Human Puppet’ to describe a certain style of performance by flesh and blood actors.
