Today’s the big day – a performance from all three groups (Jan Madhyam, Kutumb and Ummeed) at the R. S. Junior School in Khan Market – so not much time, but here are a few photos from last weekend, when we were lucky enough to be given a workshop from puppetry professionals Katkatha (www.katkatha.org) at their treehouse studio in South Delhi. We learnt to build and manipulate Bunryaku-style 3-person puppets out of newspaper, and then created 2 giant puppets for today’s show, from a mixture of baskets, umbrellas and washing machine tubing.

Asha, Anurupa and Anand show us their full-size Bunryaku puppet.

Our newspaper puppets looked more like this, but were still creepily life-like when we got it right

Shopping for materials for our puppets with Anurupa, the founder of Katkatha

The professionals show us how it’s done

The giant bird takes shape

The Jan Madhyam kids try out our octopus