Behind the Screen: Kerala’s Shadow Puppeteers and the Festivals Keeping Them Working

Tholpavakoothu, Kerala's traditional shadow-leather puppetry, is a ritual art as much as a performance one: puppeteers narrate episodes of the Ramayana behind an illuminated screen, traditionally as a temple offering rather than a ticketed show. The form is still performed in more than a hundred Kerala temples during the festival season — a scale that keeps it functioning as a living ritual practice, not a museum piece, even as the number of trained puppeteer families narrows with each generation.

Two national platforms gave puppetry and related performance traditions wider visibility in 2025. The National School of Drama's Bharat Rang Mahotsav presented more than 200 productions across its 2025 edition, one of the country's largest annual theatre showcases and a regular platform for traditional performance forms alongside contemporary drama. The ISHARA International Puppet Theatre Festival continued its role as one of the few dedicated stages in India built specifically around puppetry, connecting Indian traditions like Tholpavakoothu with international puppet theatre practice.

What both festivals do, in different ways, is give an audience outside the temple courtyard a reason to encounter the form — without asking it to leave the courtyard behind.

A shadow puppet doesn't perform for applause. A festival stage has to earn the right to show it anyway.

For Antare Kala, this is the exact tension the Rangmanch pillar is built to sit inside — documenting a ritual art on its own terms, while still helping it find the audience that keeps it working.