Photo of Puppet Showplace’s recent Tholpavakoothu performance, taken by Calla
Hello! My name is Calla Paragiri, and I’ve been an intern at the Showplace for a total of around six months now. I graduated high school in June, all set to go to college in September for engineering. Throughout my life I’ve also held a strong love for visual arts and performance, which along with my Indian heritage, encouraged me to research more about our recent Tholpavakoothu show.
Picture this: It's a warm summer evening and you finally arrive at a lush, peaceful park overlook. There’s already a crowd sitting comfortably on the grass, and a special kind of stage has already been put up. A translucent screen, softly glowing in warm hues from the coconut oil lamps behind. As night falls and the sky darkens, it slowly makes the screen come to life, and all eyes are drawn to the sudden movements past it.
This marks the opening of the Indian puppetry tradition, Tholpavakoothu. A mesmerizing display of shadow puppetry with origins estimated to be in 9th or 10th century AD, Kerala, India. There, its people have been performing it as a temple ritual to the goddess Bhadrakali ever since. According to Kerala Tourism, the word Tholpavakoothu can be broken down into three parts; Thol, which means leather, pava as in doll, and finally koothu, that stands for the play.
Why leather, though? Well, that’s what shadow puppeteers use to make their puppets! Deerskin, specifically, is used for these characters as it is said to be sacred. The hair is removed, and then the puppet’s outline is drawn onto the skin before its cut out, decorated with carved dots, lines, holes, and finally painted with natural colors made out of boiled pieces of different woods. Hands of the same material are cut out and attached to the puppets, while bamboo sticks are used to control each part of it in a rod-puppet like manner.
Rahul Koonathara and Anthony Sellitto-Budney working behind-the-scenes of their Tholpavakoothu performance presented by Puppet Showplace, photo taken by Calla
Over 160 of these 80cm puppets are arranged behind a long, sheer white cloth screen (ayupudava) that stretches across the Koothumadam: the proper name for the stages in Thoolpavakoothu. Behind it, a row of coconut wick lanterns, each filled with coconut oil, is organized to light up the scene, and properly bring out the shape and shadow of the puppets.
At Puppet Showplace Theater this summer, we had the pleasure to host performers Rahul Koonathara and Anthony Sellitto-Budney to perform the Indian epic, Ramayana. According to the legend, the goddess, busy in a fight with a powerful demon, missed the grand fight between Rama (the protagonist of the epic) and the demon king Ravana. To make up for it, the epic was staged into a shadow puppet show, particularly the chapter that narrated the battle. Since then, it has been performed for her at Bhadrakali temples’ courtyards, telling the story in 21 parts over 21 nights, in return for her blessing on the community. Eleventh generation Tholpavakoothu puppeteer KK Ramachandra Pulavar said in a 2013 blog post, “In our history, shadow puppetry is believed to be the first art form in the world. It comes from holiness, nature, sunlight, shadow, and the human movement itself.”
For Ramachandra, Tholpavakoothu has been a part of his life for as long as he can remember. The puppeteer was born in 1960 in Kerala, to a family of puppeteers, who just like him, each grew to take over the ritual for Bhadrakali. Families like these, of artists, poets, and scholars, carry the title of ‘Pulavar’.
Ramachandra’s father, celebrated puppeteer K.L. Krishnankutty Pulavar successfully began popularizing the puppet show and teaching his son Tholpavakoothu from a young age. Although he had this influence, Ramachandra actually started with a postal office job before leaving and completely devoting his life to continue his family’s tradition. Since then, he has risen to become the main figure in taking Tholpavakoothu out of the temples and sharing it with the rest of the world, as well as creating new performances with modern themes of socio-political issues, and historical figures. This led him to receive the highest award in Indian performance arts in 2015, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award. In addition to this, he has also made shadow puppetry more inclusive by teaching the male-dominated art form to women in his family and community.
Despite the awards and growing popularity, this ancient shadow puppetry may be at risk of slowly disappearing over time, just like other ancient art forms. Changes in society, economic factors, and rising lack of apprentices may contribute to difficulties in preserving traditions. But through globalization, the rise of social media, and recent trends in the puppetry industry, modern-age puppeteers are recognizing all the socio-economic shifts that endanger their art, as well as the necessary changes that need to be made to broaden representation in language, themes, and personal experiences.
Crowds gathered on the Allerton Overlook lawn awaiting Puppet Showplace Theater’s Summer 2025 Tholpavakoothu performance
Introducing Tholpavakoothu to the public for entertainment, rather than as a ritual, opened new doors for both Ramachandra and his performance, not just in India but all over the world and to different audiences from different countries and who speak different languages as well.
Meanwhile, changes that accommodate our ever-shifting society are being taken care of by Ramachandra’s own son, twelfth generation puppeteer, Rahul Koonathara Pulavar. A recipient of UConn’s Harriot fellowship, Rahul continues his father’s work, sharing the tradition with puppeteers and artists in our country, and even in our own Puppet Showplace Theater! By carrying on the work his ancestors have done for centuries to new places and audiences, he and his family have managed to successfully preserve the art that has shaped their lives, leaving their legacy visible to the rest of the world.
Puppet Showplace’s Summer 2025 Interns, From Left: Amarachi Okeke, Calla Paragiri, and Kevin Zhou
Editor’s Note: This blog post was written by Calla Paragiri, a Summer 2025 Intern at Puppet Showplace Theater.
If you’re interested in learning more about Tholpavakoothu, click here to go the Tholpavakoothu website →
And — read more about Puppet Showplace’s recent Tholpavakoothu performance, and other blog posts authored by the Summer 2025 intern team, on our blog, here →
