magnificent and relevant as any other performing art and says it would be most exciting to have a puppetry festival travel through the country every two years i first fell in love with contemporary puppetry when i watched phillippe gentry perform at the prithvi theatre festival in 1995 she says the magic of puppetry lies in the fact that it can break and play with scale and perception of space and physical dimension audiences are just beginning to understand that puppetry is not just for kids and at times not for kids at all ive been told by some theatre managers that my work is too controversial for a space like this they prefer not to have my shows smiles varun narain of pi theatre whose lifesize puppets are fond of breaking stereotypes of gender and sexuality so ive had shows in nightclubs at rave parties and restaurants like tote and indigo on fashion ramps on yachts in amsterdam in the redlight districts of kamathipura in mumbai and sonagachi in kolkata narain particularly enjoyed performing in a tree house in khajuraho at an international sex workers seminar organised by the feminist legal research centre his show he says went on through the seminar sex workers from across asiapacific came to talk about sexual and legal rights so did bandhana his puppet she got on the flight with her bags and people started goofing around with her from the start so by the time the conference began she played the devils advocate narain says even if youre a sex worker at a conference youll say the right thing so as to not offend anybody bandhana would intervene with a totally different point of view and that would ungag everybody the directions in which contemporary puppetry can grow are many but the need of the hour all the puppeteers insist is a formal training school for contemporary puppetry there isnt a single puppetry module at any indian university merely short workshops conducted at the national school of drama and at the national institute of design proper training will give puppeteers a sense of history and validity and allow a new creative narrative to emerge