What is amazing about Sudip Gupta’s puppets is the balance between realistic detail and a magical beauty. The sophisticated materials, techniques and skill of the puppeteers make the suspension of disbelief almost automatic.

With Taming of the Wild, Doll’s Theatre’s latest production staged at Madhusudan Mancha on May 31, director and designer Sudip Gupta raises the bar for puppet shows. Puppeteers who pride themselves on propagating the Indian puppet traditions often forget to fine-tune these traditions to the contemporary world. Gupta’s fish are descendants of traditional Indian rod puppets but any child who liked Finding Nemo would love these too. Gupta’s four acts for environmental conservation challenge the idea that puppets are meant for children only and, therefore, can be made and performed anyhow as long as the ‘message’ is drummed out in voice-overs. Instead of a tiny window, Gupta uses a full-fledged stage for his puppets, complete with special lighting and a sound design mostly using Western classical music.

In “The world within”, we have fish in twos and threes flitting in dappled water, nibbling food and enjoying themselves till a fisherman’s hook begins to snatch them away. There is no voice-over, no dialogue and the fish move normally enough, yet one can imagine what they say and plan. The piece ended rather sadly for the fisherman but the children in the audience cheered lustily. “Floral tribute”, about a woodcutter’s attempts to cut down a rather unassuming little green plant with red flowers also drew spontaneous laughter — when the saw broke against the metallic-sounding plant or when the smoke spewing-tractor tried in vain to run over the plant. Once again there were no dialogues, no explanations. In “Movement in wilderness”, snatches of Hindustani music were heard as two pigeons and an old spider discovered the joys of ‘playing’ an abandoned tabla and a violin.

The last piece, “Call of the wild”, had a couple of four-and-a-half feet high blue and yellow cranes dancing by a surging sea, shaking their huge wings and moving fluidly to the background music. A giant shell with a glimmering pearl inside is a trap laid by hunters with nets. In the final scene, there is a direct confrontation between an actor playing the hunter and the puppet bird. Gupta here develops on the Japanese tradition of Bunraku puppet theatre, where large complicated dolls are operated on stage by puppeteers. Here the two birds operated by strings and rods were maneuvered by four puppeteers, to whose bodies the birds were partly attached. But since they were covered in black, the UV lighting rendered them totally invisible.

Those who missed this show could catch it at the ICCR on June 15, 6.30 pm.