Pip: Ashlit.in — where the oldest stories get their strings pulled, literally.
Mara: Today we’re covering a piece by Dr Aswathy Aravindakshan that traces how puppetry and storytelling have traveled together across centuries and continents. Let’s start with that long, shared history.
Storytelling and Puppetry Across Time and Tradition
Pip: The core question here is why puppetry has lasted — across cultures, centuries, and very different ideas about what a story is for.
Mara: The post frames the connection directly: “Puppetry is a way of telling stories using puppets. The puppets act like characters in the story, while the puppeteer gives them voice and movement. This makes stories more interesting and enjoyable for the audience.”
Pip: So the puppeteer is doing double work — animating a body and carrying a narrative at the same time. That’s not just performance, that’s a whole craft discipline.
Mara: And it’s ancient. The post traces it through Eastern traditions first — Indonesia’s Wayang Kulit uses shadow puppets to tell stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, Japan’s Bunraku deploys large puppets handled by skilled artists for emotionally complex storytelling, and China has its own shadow puppet lineage rooted in folk tales and history.
Pip: Three countries, three completely distinct technical approaches, all arriving at roughly the same solution: give the story a body.
Mara: Europe developed its own strand — marionette shows, fairy tales staged with puppets, and eventually Jim Henson’s Muppets, which the post notes became famous worldwide for blending entertainment with education.
Pip: From temple courtyards to primetime television. That’s a considerable journey for a wooden figure on a string.
Mara: India’s regional traditions get real depth here. Rajasthan’s Kathputli uses string puppets for folk stories and tales of kings. Andhra Pradesh’s Tholu Bommalata performs shadow-puppet versions of the epics. And in Keralam, Pavakathakali — glove puppets inspired by Kathakali — and Tholpavakoothu, a temple-based shadow-puppet form using leather puppets to tell the story of Rama, both show how tightly puppetry is woven into ritual and regional identity.
Mara: The post also notes that today puppetry moves into classrooms and awareness programmes — teachers and artists using puppets to carry social messages in accessible ways.
Pip: The form keeps finding new rooms to walk into.
Mara: Which raises the question of what keeps it useful — and that’s really about how stories travel when they need to reach people who learn differently.
Pip: Myths, epics, folk tales, primetime — puppetry just keeps finding the audience where it lives.
Mara: The throughline is that stories need a body. Next time, more from ashlit.in.
Dr Aswathy Aravindakshan is a teacher, bilingual writer and artist with over two decades of experience in teaching English language and literature. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of English at NSS College for Women, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. Her blog, ashlit.in brings together academic resources, creative writing in Malayalam and English, and visual art. The platform features lecture notes, study materials, poems, reflections, short prose, and a curated collection of her paintings. Through this space, she seeks to foster learning, creativity, and meaningful engagement with literature and the arts.
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