With new and exciting performances from India and across the world, the 14th edition of the Ishara International Puppet Theatre Festival begins today evening. The ten-day-long festival will bring together the modern and traditional forms of puppetry, ranging from rod to string puppets to mixed performances with dance, theatre, music and more.
Organised by the The Ishara Puppet Theatre Trust, this year the participating countries will be Egypt, Iran, USA, Afghanistan, Italy, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland apart from India.
India’s Katkatha Puppet Theatre will be presenting ‘Dinosaur’ using mediums of puppets, masks, objects, actors and dance. The non-verbal show, where puppets are human size or bigger, tell the story of a ‘T Rex’ egg that gets separated from the next. In this show, the baby dinosaur that hatches does not know he is a T Rex. He starts to desperately look for his mother.
The other Indian production would be by Dadi D Pudumjee, founder of the Ishara Puppet Theatre. The production ‘Images of Truth’, a groundbreaking and inspiring masterpiece is returning to the Indian stage after almost a decade. Choreographed to music from across the world, it’s a non-verbal, musical adaption on Mahatma Gandhi. The production gives an insight into Gandhi’s early life to his spiritual discovery of the universal message of Satyagraha and non-violent protest.
The Ishara International Puppet Festival will be held from February 5-14 at 7.30 pm at India Habitat Centre and Epicentre, Sector 44, Gurgaon.
Tickets are available on www.kyazoonga.com. The Chandigarh leg of the festival will be held at Tagore Theatre.
