“Bollywood. Puppets. Scandals. The never-aging superstar. The item girl. The love triangle. Super hit songs. Exotic locations. The spot boy. The stuntman. The casting couch. Bollywood Bandwagon has it all! It is a hilarious comedy for adults, which is based on stories from Bollywood, presented with puppets and actors,” promised the BookMyShow page of Bollywood Bandwagon. It had been a long time since I last went to Rangashankara and Jo was also rather keen to watch a live play. Plus, we had both never been to a puppet show!
So off we went – only to be joined midway by my other play-enthu buddy, Shyam (who, incidently was the partner in crime for The Open Couple too)! On the way, we were aided by a very helpful auto bhaiyya who first took us to the wrong place and on discovering that it was not where we had told him to take us, took us to the right location, absolutely free of charge. After this no-minor miracle, our mood was rather upbeat as we filed into the Rangashankara’s beautiful stage. I’ve this habit of unconsciously fidgeting when I’m excited and by the time the show started, I was a mess of twiddling thumbs and jiggling toes. And what a show it turned out to be!
And this time, once the show ended, the Katkadha crew were sporting enough to let the audience take pictures and to interact with the crew and the puppets as well – one of the artists even let us take pictures with the puppets! The director of the show Ms. Anurupa Roy, is a postgraduate in History from Lady Shriram College, New Delhi. She is a puppeteer and a trainer and is one of the trustees of the Katkatha puppet arts trust. In between other things, she mentioned that she has been working on this particular act for the past 7 years!
The Bollywood Bandwagon has just completed a tour of Switzerland and Austria and will move on to perform at Delhi from the coming Monday.
Picture Courtesy – http://www.rangashankara.org/
Fact and fiction 