Kanitkar Puppet Group - Preserving the art of puppetry

In 1965, Mr Vasanth Kanitkar, a lecturer in a teacher's training institute in Mumbai, attended a workshop on puppetry education conducted by an American lady. He came back completely convinced that a puppet was an extremely effective educational tool and was determined to put his finding to good use. In 1967, the Govt. of Maharashtra set up the State Institute of Education and he was made the Head of the Department of the Puppetry section. His enthusiasm with puppets deepened and soon rubbed off on his family.

His wife started making puppets, and soon the entire Kanitkar clan was hooked on to the art. The Kanitkar Puppet Group was set up in 1967 to perpetuate the art of puppetry. Essentially a family affair comprising of six highly charged members, the group tapped several educational institutions, since their main idea was to get across in a lively and engrossing manner 'socially relevant' educational messages.

In 1973, Hemanth, Vasanth's son and an active member of the group, won a 3 year scholarship instituted by the National School of Drama, New Delhi, to undergo advanced training in Puppetry and stage craft. Hemanth spent the next three years honing his skills with short stints at NDA, Darpana Academy, Ahmedabad and Design Center, Mumbai.  In 1976, he won yet another scholarship, this time awarded by the University of Bombay under the Graduate Voluntary Scheme.The scheme aims in having volunteers go to villages and apply the skills and knowledge acquired in an urban milieu and check the response in a rural setting. The responses being more than encouraging, Hemanth stayed back to promote the adaptation of this essentially traditional art to relevant and contemporary themes and issues in the rural districts of Maharashtra. Around 1977, in Raigad District he met Ranjana, his future wife, a political activist with Jayprakash Narayan's movement. They got married in 1981 and together set up The Puppet.

Established in March 1983, the People's Universal Popular Puppetry Educational Theatre (PUPPET) is an organisation that aims at using the traditional art of Puppetry to tackle contemporary social issues. The couple worked in conjunction with other NGOs and staged lively performances to effectively put across the messages the NGOs wished to communicate to rural folk.

The PUPPET has held more than 200 workshops across the country.  They have trained thousands of teachers and special teachers. At Astitva - a special school for children with physical and mental disabilities at Dombivili near Mumbai, Ranjana found that children with hearing impairment communicated better with the help of puppets. This discovery led to her winning the 'Best Ideas Person' at the "Rehabilitation of Physically and Mentally Disabled" Conference.

At a national workshop on Science and Technology held in Pune, Hemanth got the sanction from industrialist Sam Pitroda, to have close to 35 traditional puppetry groups attend the seminar. Towards the end of the seminar, he got the folk artists to stage performances based on the scientific and technical knowledge they had gathered at the workshop.

The Kanitkars have through their craft, not just created awareness but have also helped mitigate a lot of myths and superstitions that thrive in the rural areas.
Any organisation wishing to campaign for social issues can get in touch with them. Their performance has always been of social relevance. The commercial stage is not for them.

The couple have ambitious plans for the future. Their dreams are to start a school on puppetry and folk theatre forms for social education and communication. The optimistic feeling of the Kanitkars is that, by imparting systematic and scientific education, the younger generation of conventional artists can at least hope to make a career of the traditional folk art. One hopes that this truly committed couple succeeds in their endeavour of keeping alive the remarkable Indian art of puppetry and folk theatre.

Address: The Puppet, 2/25, Gopinath Nagar, Near Gandhi Bhavan, Kothrud, Pune 400 029. Phone: 538 0828