Anurupa Roy

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA under Arts Platforms will facilitate puppet labs as a platform that will train puppeteers, facilitating collaborations with senior artists as mentors, thus providing a supportive environment for creating experimental work in puppetry, and thereby building a skilled and connected community. Anurupa Roy is the Coordinator for this project. 

Anurupa Roy is a puppeteer, puppet designer, and director of puppet theatre who co-founded the Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust in 1998. She received her puppetry diploma from Dramatiska Institutet, University of Stockholm and also trained at the Scoula De La Guaratelle under Bruno Leone. She was awarded the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar for puppetry in 2006 and is a 2023 British Council CLORE Chevening Fellow. She has directed more than 40 puppet productions for Katkatha and she has also designed puppet exhibitions for institutions such as the National Museum in Delhi and the Serendipity Arts Festival. She is the director of PuppetOscope, India's first international puppet film festival. As a trustee of UNIMA Puppeteers Trust, she co-founded the Master class programs in 2014 and the Foundation program in 2019. In 2023, Katkatha launched the Puppet labs, a program that mentors and funds young puppeteers to develop new performances that are shown at the Puppet Fringe Festival. Given Anurupa’s experience, she is best placed to be the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

The Arts Platform project will be based on The Puppet Lab, conceived as a safe and innovative space where artists can freely experiment and take artistic risks. Modern puppetry is still a nascent art form in India, and there is a significant divide between formal training and practical professional application. The lab will be strategically designed to bridge this gap by encouraging artists to push their existing skills and engage in new collaborations with musicians, writers, dancers, and visual artists. This will provide an environment for artists who may not have the capacity to immediately embark on a large-scale project, allowing them to take the steps necessary for future artistic journeys.

The Arts Platform will be designed to train puppeteers, facilitate collaborations with artists from other disciplines, and provide a professional showcase for their new work. The central aim will be to cultivate a dynamic environment that promotes the creation of new and experimental work, establish meaningful professional partnerships, and expand the critical mass of the modern puppet theatre community. The platform will involve a long-term commitment to nurturing a supportive network of artists who will continue to collaborate and find creative partners well into the future, thereby ensuring the sustainability and growth of the puppetry art form in India.

The incubation lab will include an open call inviting applications across India. The selection will be on the basis of the projects proposed and the work previously done. The shortlisted applicants will be engaged in a 15-day workshop, with multiple mentors. The workshop will include masterclasses and facilitate improvisation sessions where artists get to improvise together. The final output will be the start of their final projects. The participants will pitch to a jury, including IFA staff and Katkatha team, and four artists will be selected for a small seed grant and mentoring. The seed grant will pay for the production costs and the mentors will meet the artists for discussion during the creation process. The seed grants will be supported by Goethe Institut, which will be exclusive of the IFA project implementation. The final shows will be in Delhi during a 10-day final mentorship and technical support period where the participants will be provided a rehearsal space. They will perform at the Fringe Festival, which will be the final advanced lab for 10 days culminating in their presentations. Between the two workshops, the mentors will hold online sessions with the selected artists. 

The outcomes of the project will be the puppet lab, online mentoring sessions and final showcase of four new final puppetry shows. The Project Coordinator's deliverables to IFA, along with the final report, will be the photographic and audio-visual documentation of the artistic process of the labs, workshops and the final puppetry shows. 

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Practice programme in the manner in which it attempts to create a new generation of skilled puppetry professionals and a supportive community; and a strong cohort of artists, expanding the network of puppetry as a vibrant and collaborative art form in India.

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.