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Suresh Dutta Suresh Dutta is an Indian puppet artist, theatre personality and the founder of Calcutta Puppet Theatre, a Kolkata-based theatre group dedicated to puppetry. Born in 1934, Faridpur,in undivided Bengal of the British India. He took a diploma in dance, drama and music,and received training in fine arts from the Albert League Temple Art School and College. Dutta also trained himself under Phani Bhushan, a Jatra exponent, and Kathakali under Balakrishna Menon. He also learnt Bharatanatyam and Manipuri,this stood in him in good stead in his parala puppeteer at the Children’s Little Theatre,Calcutta in1954 and produce several shows with marionettes, of which Mithuya in 1955 and Dustu Indur i.e. ‘Naughty Mouse’ in 1956 became immensely popular. Then he moved to Russia, under a scholarship in 1962, to train in puppetry master, Sergei Obraztsov. After returning he continuedwith the Children’s Little Theatre till1971. In 1973, he founded his own puppet theatre group, Calcutta

The genesis of puppetry in India is in folk theatre.The term Sutradhar or Puppeteers commonly used in traditional theatre, referring to the narrator, literally means the holder of the stings. Puppeteers of a puppet play bring inanimate objects to life to make them perform and interpret scripts with the same degree of integrity as actors, they work with variety of different puppet and some puppeteers also make their own puppets. Production of a puppet play can make enormous demands on the puppeteer. They are often required to cope with poor physical conditions, including working in strange position on, under or above the set, whilst also being able to operate a variety of puppets. They must be able to deliver scripted dialogue, in character, while coping with puppets that are frequently unwieldy. Puppet theatre in India does have its own idiom-“the puppeteer design the figure and idea much in the same way like an artist or a poet”. The Puppeteers are to found mostly in village fairs

Puppetry is a mother of folk theatre. Since ages , puppetry has been one of the most popular source of entertainment in India .Puppets shows are viewed and liked equally provides mirth to children and adults. India , which has a rich history of her creativity, has slowly became a name in the rich timeline of Indian  'natya'  with the emergence of this Indian puppetry as a typical visual art form. In Indian puppets shows dolls come alive, simulating life and reality whilst giving meaning to the creator’s ideology. It is the most sophisticated enactments with boundless possibilities for revolution creativeness. As folk theatre themes for puppets shows are mostly based on epics and legends and were part of oral tradition. It is with the colossal development of the religious puppetry, puppetry evolved as a medium in epitomizing the epics of  Ramayana and Mahabharata .Also stories like Panchatantra tales, Hitopadesh ,moral stories, local myths and legends, the stories from Vikr

India as homeland of puppetry,has four types of traditional puppets. Traditional puppets derive their repertoire, costume and music from the folk theatre of the particular region. The presentation of puppet programs involves the creative art of many people working together.They are differentiated based on different ways of manipulation of puppets.   The four types of puppets are :-          String Puppets          Shadow Puppets          Glove Puppets          Rod Puppets      1. String Puppets India has a rich and ancient tradition of string puppets or marionettes. String puppets or marionettes is a figure with many joints and suspended by string from a control. String puppet operates from above. In this form of puppetry, strings are held by the hands of the puppeteers. Strings puppets are made of wood, or wire, or cloth stuffed with cotton, rags on saw dust. These puppets have joined limbs and arms controlled by strings allow far greater flexibility and are th