Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust

To support a professionally managed space for the promotion, preservation and development of puppet theatre and allied arts, and to train the next generation of puppeteers.

Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust is a pioneering Delhi-based puppet-theatre company founded by the puppeteer Anurupa Roy in 1998 and registered as a trust in 2006. It creates original productions using puppets, masks, objects and animation alongside actors and music, drawing on techniques from Bunraku-style rod puppets to shadow and object theatre, in works ranging from the Ramayana and Mahabharata to Shakespearean comedy and stories from conflict zones. Katkatha tours Indian and international puppet and theatre festivals, collaborates with companies across the world, runs training programmes and residencies for young puppeteers, and undertakes applied puppetry with schools and communities.

Anurupa Roy founded Katkatha in 1998 while still a student, learning from senior puppeteers such as Dadi Pudumjee in the absence of any formal puppetry training in India, and went on to reimagine puppetry as a form of theatre in which humans and puppets are co-actors. Registered as a trust in 2006, Katkatha developed a rigorous training system through master-classes, mentorships and residencies to seed a new generation of professional puppeteers, and pioneered puppets for change, using puppetry to give voice to marginalised communities, including trauma-affected women in Kashmir. Its productions have toured widely across Europe, North America and Asia.