UNIMA VICE PRESIDENT / ASIA-PACIFIC COMMISSION

Anurupa Roy is a puppeteer, puppet designer and a director of puppet theatre. She is the Co-Founder and Managing Trustee of Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust since 1998. She has a diploma in puppetry at Dramatiska Institutet, University of Stockholm headed by Michael Meschke and has trained at the Scoula De La Guaratelle under Bruno Leone. She is a recipient of the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar in Puppetry, National Award in Puppet Theater in 2006, from the Ministry of Culture.

She has been an Artist-in-Residency at Rote Fabrik in Zurich and a Researcher-in-Residence, at the Institute International Marionettes at Charleville and at DFP in Bochum, Germany. She has been a faculty member at the Dept of World Arts and Culture, UCLA. Anurupa has worked as a consultant in arts for public health, 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(CSMCS) Mumbai and during the Goethe Institutes Infinite Library Project. She has directed over forty puppet productions for Katkatha supported by India Foundation for the Arts, Festival Mondial Des Theatres de Marrionnettes, Charleville- Mezieres, France, Helios Theater, Hamm, Germany, The Japan Foundation, Atelier de la Luna, Spain and as guest director for TIE Repertory Company, National School of Drama and the Sandbox Collective, Bangalore. A key priority for Anurupa is creating a rigorous training system for puppeteers with a focus to train the next generation of professional puppeteers in India, creating a discourse around puppetry and also building a network of puppeteers through the UNIMA Puppeteers Trust where she co-founded the Master class programs in 2014 and the Foundation program in 2019. She is the founding trustee of the UNIMA Puppeteers Trust, India.