Celebrating folk art
Rural folk arts hold a special place in any culture and to safeguard this art form in Telangana a workshop ‘Wooden String Puppets’ was organised as part of Hyderabad Children’s Theatre Festival at Shilparamam on Sunday.
Jangaon-based puppet artiste Mothe Jagannatham wowed children during his interactive puppet workshop in the city
Rural folk arts hold a special place in any culture and to safeguard this art form in Telangana a workshop ‘Wooden String Puppets’ was organised as part of Hyderabad Children’s Theatre Festival at Shilparamam on Sunday.
Jangaon-based artiste Mothe Jagannatham, who is doing this art for the past 10 years, shared its importance. He performed an episode of Lava Kusha from the epic Ramayana using wooden string puppets. Children from various schools participated in the event and had thorough fun in the show.
About the art form Jagannatham said, “My grandfather, Mothe Narasimhulu started making wooden string puppets with the help of his associate Avusula Ramayya. About 60 years ago, a landlord, Malayala Dora asked my grandfather to make these puppets.
My grandfather made various puppets, explaining the mythological and contemporary stories. From the past three generations, we are trying to save this art form. Earlier, we came here many times to perform, but we were not given chance.
However, after the formation of Telangana we got more encouragement. KV Ramana Chari, Mamidi Harikrishna and Veda Kumar helped us to save this art. Recently, Telangana government also made a documentary ‘Bommalollu -The Puppeteers’ to propagate its importance.”
“Narrating a story through puppets is not easy; we have to perform a minimum of 8-9 hours nonstop to complete the entire programme. Usually, we perform Lava Kusha, Bala Nagamma, Chenchu Laxmi, Savitri, Jaganmohini, Nagamma among others. We performed at Vijayawada, Tirupati, Machilipatnam, Nalgonda, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Warangal, Khammam, Assam, New Delhi, Meghalaya and Uttar Pradesh,” he adds.
Veda Kumar, Chairman, Telangana Resource Centre, who is a frontrunner in saving this art form said, “In Telangana many folk art forms are popular. Wooden string puppets art is an astonishing 200-year-old. We tried our best to save these types of art forms.
Telangana government has taken necessary steps to save this art. Our aim is to explain the greatness of this art to children so that the art can survive for future generations. This art has a variety of stories. The artistes, who perform these arts, must have a great stamina and the artist does a commendable job.”
By V Sateesh Reddy
