PNCA starts online puppet shows
PHOTO: EXPRESS
With the centre in the heart of the federal capital still closed for public due to the novel coronavirus (Covid-19), the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) will start holding its puppet show for children online where children will be guided on taking precautionary measures against the virus.
The show will be held daily at 3:30pm and will be broadcast live on Facebook from July 1 onwards.
Before the pandemic, the council used to regularly hold puppet shows for children, providing them with a source for entertainment and education.
Officials said that PNCA, which operates a national puppet theatre, will also showcase techniques of puppet making through online workshops. These workshops are expected to commence later this month. The national puppet theatre has its history of entertaining children and elders equally over the past four decades, playing a pivotal role in training children on good values through its message-oriented stories and songs.
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It has also developed dance performances for folk songs from all corners of the country which symbolize all colours of the country’s different cultures.
A PNCA official said that they had planned outreach programmes where puppet shows were scheduled to be initially held in different schools of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. In subsequent phases, the programme would be expanded to schools in other parts of the country.
Moreover, an international puppet festival had also been planned for the year, but they were all postponed owing to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We hope Covid-19 will end and we will return to our routine lives soon,” he said.
Apart from new productions, snippets from PNCA archives will also be used to make up the programme.
About the puppet-making workshop, the official said that they will be held every Monday at 4:30pm, and will be conducted by a renowned trainer and expert puppeteer Farooq Qaiser.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 1st, 2020.