Puppet Art

Sri Lanka has its own puppetry tradition, rukada natya, strongest in the southern coastal belt around Ambalangoda: carved wooden marionettes, jointed and painted, controlled from above by strings, traditionally performing folk stories and satire for a village audience.

What is worth studying from it for this lesson is the figure design itself - features are exaggerated for visibility from a distance and under lamplight, in much the same way a cartoon exaggerates for a page. The two lessons in this unit reinforce the same idea from two different traditions.