JOIN USRustic tales and puppets come to life at BeSt festival
From Cubbon Park Metro station to the age of kings and kingdoms, participants of the BeSt Storytelling festival travelled in time to hear stories of how the city Bengaluru came to be.
Bangalore Storytelling Society (BSS) engaged adults and children in workshops and sessions at the day-long storytelling festival. People of all ages attended the events in the Metro station and at the Rangoli Metro Art Centre on MG Road.
Jeff Gere, a storyteller from Hawaii, involved participants in an aerobics session for the face to explore the wide range of expressions to use when telling a story. Gere regaled them with anecdotes when their cheeks ached from the exercise.
Priyanka Chatterjee, a storyteller herself, came all the way from Kolkata to participate in the festival. “There are independent storytellers, but no such festival where everyone gets together. I got to learn a lot from the workshops on characterisation and observation,” she said.
Chatterjee appreciated BSS for having a session in Kannada. “In Kolkata, as in other places, English stories get much better response. Regional languages are dying and it is through platforms like these that we can keep them alive.’ Amit Mathur’s six-year-old daughter Navya was very excited to be at the festival.
“She loves to read so much that she even reads in bed at night. We missed the beginning of the session, but she still loved the story about animals,” Mathur said.
The session on Kannada storytelling by Dr Kuruva Basavaraju took people back to their childhood when they gathered around their grandmothers to listen to folktales. Sobane Ramaiah’s rustic tale about a fearsome ‘rakshasa’ and the villagers who defeat him had the adults in splits.
Even better, 72-year-old Mayamma from Ramanagaram made everyone nostalgic with her ‘ajji kathegalu’. The little ones were excited for the puppet show by Rangaputhali puppeteers. The show began with a puppet garlanding a 250-year-old Ganesha idol.
The string-cum-rod puppets danced around, performing circus tricks and acrobatics and enacting a story on Tenali Rama. At the end of the performance, the artists revealed the tricks of their trade and showed children how to bring life to the wooden dolls.