Salaki Suthrada Bombe

Wooden figures dressed in Moodalapaaya finery, come alive on rods and strings. This performance brings traditional folk puppets to the stage, performed by a troupe carrying the craft forward across five generations.

Each puppet stands three to three and a half feet tall, carved by hand and strung with iron rods and thread for manipulation, a technique passed down through a family of performers for nearly a century and a half. The evening opens with the history of the form and its place within Karnataka’s wider puppetry traditions, before the artists demonstrate how a puppet is carved,…