A few months ago, Mamulengo de Cheiroso, the sole puppet group from the state of Sergipe in Brazil wrote to us, requesting to meet puppeteers from West Bengal during their trip to India.
Excited about visitors from far off Aracaju in the state of Sergipe, the smallest state in Brazil, we got busy and on World Puppetry Day, March 21, 2017, we organized a small interactive meet between puppeteers of West Bengal and four members from Mamulengo. We had representatives from glove puppetry, rod puppetry, string puppetry and the Santal Chadar Badni. Our puppeteers too were treated to a demonstration of Brazilian puppetry. Mamulengo is a type of puppet performance popular in North East Brazil. Mamulengo means soft hand. The group derived its name from this word. Cheiroso is the name of their mascot.
Both our visitors and our folk and tribal puppeteers gave short demonstrations of their art and it was a very exciting experience for all concerned. Our visitors were completely overwhelmed and couldn`t thank the local puppeteers enough. Indeed, it was a once in a lifetime, moving experience for all of us!
In the following days, they visited rod puppeteer, Nirapada Mondal`s workshop in South 24 Parganas and also interacted with lac doll maker, Brindaban Chanda. We also introduced them to vegetable dyes used by patachitra artists, courtesy a demonstration by Bahar Chitrakar.
It was wonderful meeting the delightful foursome from Mamulengo, Augusto, Claudia, Marlene and Pedro.
Claudia was translator as the others spoke only Portugese, though Pedro did have a smattering of English. Augusto Barreto, the director of Mamulengo, managed to convey everything with the one English word he knew: Beautiful!!!
We, at Daricha Foundation, eagerly look forward to interacting with them again.