Rahul

Rahul Koonathara has been awarded UConn’s Harriott Fellowship for outstanding young scholars who have been admitted to doctoral programs at the University of Connecticut.  Recipients of these fellowship represent the very best applicants to graduate programs at the University. Applicants must also demonstrate a commitment to enhancing diversity in higher education and/or a commitment to enhancing diversity in their field of study.  Rahul will be taking up the PhD fellowship in the fall of 2024.

Rahul Koonathara is completing his MA in Comparative Literature which is focused on tradition and transformation in  shadow puppetry. He is himself an accomplished shadow puppeteer, a tradition in his family. This past summer he toured extensively through the US with his father, Padmashri Ramachandra Pulavar, also a master and keeper of this form. They  performed across the country.

He has produced several puppetry shows here at the Ballard Institute celebrating South Indian shadow puppet traditions of Tolu Bommalatta and Tholpavakoothu, as well as recent innovations reflecting the changing nature of the form, in a show he has curated called Tradition and Revolution in Indian Shadow Puppetry.  The show last summer led to a longer-term exhibition at the Ballard Institute.

Tholpavakoothu Ramayana Performance

This ancient, ritually rooted performance is based on verses from the Kamba Ramayana, the Tamil version of the Hindu epic the Ramayana. The performance includes 71 different characters, and over 160 different shadow figures. While traditional Tholpavakoothu shadow theater takes in temples as ritual performance, Ramachandra Pulavar and his family have popularized the form by performing a variety of stories of contemporary social relevance, about Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus Christ, and the empowerment of women, as well as performances based on traditional tales from the Mahabharata and the Panchatantra. Tholpavakoothu shadow figures follow four main design categories: sitting, standing, walking, and fighting puppets, as well as puppets depicting nature, battle scenes, and ceremonial processions. The Pulavar family has continued the age-old tradition of shadow puppetry for the past 12 generations with all the traditional ritualistic performances while simultaneously incorporating contemporary narratives. We perform yearly in around 85 temples in Kerala from January to May as part of our tradition in the permanent shadow puppet theatre erected in temples.