Anurupa Roy

Puppet Theatre

New Delhi, India

Artist in Residence at the Rote Fabrik from: November - December 2009

About the artist:

• 2009 Festival Linz Austria with «About Ram». Co-production with Linz Festival - Bollywood Bandwagon.com
• 2008 12th International Puppet and Film Festival, Holon, Israel
• 2008 Buxton Puppet Festival, England: «The little blue planet»
• 2007 Lecturer, University of California, Los Angeles, «World Arts and Cultures»
• 2006 Research Grant to study at Institute Internationale de la Marionette, Charleville-Mézières, France
• 2006 Collaborative Performance Grant – India Foundation for the Arts
• 2005 Fellow of Peace – WISCOMP (Women in Security Conflict Management and Peace)
• 2005 Consultant PLAN-India – For a HIV and AIDS Awareness Package (HAAP)
• 2005 Festival Co-ordinator for Putul Yatra Mumbai - 2005 National Puppet Theatre Festival

AiR-Project:

This project is for the technical study and research related to a new performance called «Gulbadan Begum’s Humayun-nama» - a show based on an Indian historical document. This performance hopes to open in New Delhi in 2010. The research will be in using new materials to build puppets with, learning more about miniature puppetry and toy thetare, learning about lighting design for puppetry, a different aesthetic approaching to using the camera in live theatre and techniques in shadow theatre. Our company Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust in India has been creating shows for the last 10 years in New Delhi. For most of this period our technique has been inspired by Japanese Bunraku, European table top puppets and traditional Indian aesthetic.

Our performance is based on the memoirs of Gulbadan Begum who was a Mogul princess. She was also the only official woman historian in India in the Mogul period and maybe even in all of Indian history.

We want to look at actual historical characters, the details of whose lives are much discussed and written about by scholars and historians but this time looking at their «other or quirky» selves which were rarely written about but which can be pieced together mainly through anecdotes cited by Gubadan Begum.

Artist Website: www.katkatha.org

Videos: Video 1 Video 2

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