Anurupa Roy

Anurupa Roy is an Indian puppeteer, puppet designer and director of puppet theater. Roy views puppetry as not "manipulating dolls with strings" but an amalgam of plastic and performing arts where sculptures, masks, figures, materials, paper theatre found objects and narratives come together with music, movement and storytelling in many styles to create the theater where humans and puppets are co actors. She started at her group Katkatha in 1998 which was registered as the Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust 2006. She has directed over many shows for children and adults ranging from the Ramayana and Mahabharata to Shakespearean comedy to the Humayun-nama. For her puppetry is the theater of dead materials that turns the mundane into magic whether a shoe, a twine or wool, old newspapers and found objects can turn into living characters in a puppet performance. The puppets used by Katkatha are mainly based on the Bunraku technique rod puppets, materials, masks and shadow puppets that range from three inches to forty feet in size. The shows have toured across India to festivals like Bharangam, International Theatre Festival of Kerala and venues like Birlasabhaghar Prithvi and to countries Europe, North America and South Asia . Anurupa works as a consultant in arts for public health, with a special focus on work on gender and sexuality for young adults and youth. peace-building and education projects for communities, schools, juvenile homes, in conflict zones like Kashmir, Sri Lanka and Manipur . She has designed puppet exhibitions for Serendipity Arts Festival , The National Museum in Delhi, the Children’s Museum at Prince of Wales Museum(CSMVS) Mumbai She is a recipient of the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar ine Puppetry (2006). National Award in Puppetry (2006) and the Shankar Nag Theatre Award in 2017 - Annual Production director −2012 directed non-verbal puppet performance for children titled 'Across the Sea' using giant puppets and music. Guest Lecturer National School of Drama - Dept of Communication- Traditional media course- Puppet Theatre general secretary UNIMA-India- from 2008– 13 Indian chapter of the Union Internationale de la Marionette- international union for puppeteers in existence since 1929. International Executive committee member of UNIMA (Union Del la Internationale Marionette) at 2004 -2008. The International Union of Puppeteers with a Centre in every country and an International Executive Committee with elected representatives from different countries of the world Guest Lecturer – UCL Arts, the University of California Los Angeles School of Arts, Department of World Arts and Cultures, as a part of the Make Art/Stop AIDS lecture series 'Puppetry in Activism' Also at Fowler Museum of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA.

Other activities based on theatre

Festival Co-ordinator for Putul Yatra Mumbai-2005 National Puppet Theatre Festival organized by Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi. This was a national festival organized to coincide with the World Puppet Day by the Government body of the Sangeet Natak Akademi. Jurist at the Prix Danube, Bratislava Slovak Republic– International Youth and Children's Film Festival. September 2003 – she was a jurist at the International Film Festival for Youth and Children in Bratislava the capital of the Slovak Republic. A seven-day event featuring 80 films from over 30 countries, in the categories of animation, documentary, fiction and magazine.