Mylapore Festival a yearly feature that is held during the Margahzi ( January ) season in Chennai. This year they had a street theatre ( Kattai Koothu) performing on the 10th and 11th of January.

Kattaikkuttu is a rural theatre form practiced in the State of Tamil Nadu in South India. The performers – by tradition only men - sing, act and dance and the musicians accompany them on the harmonium, the mridangam and the mukavinai. The terms Terukkuttu and Kattaikkuttu are often used interchangeably. However, historically the two terms appear to have distinguished, at least in certain villages, between two different kinds of performance: while Terukkuttu referred to mobile performances by two actors participating in a procession for the village deity Mariamman, Kattaikkuttu denotes overnight, narrative performances at a fixed performance space acted by an ensemble of about fifteen actors and musicians your story here.

Kattaikkuttu derives its name from the word kattai, which refers to the special ornaments worn by the actors during performances; kuttu refers to theatre. The audience recognizes the various characters by the shapes of their head wear and their make up

I present below portraits of the performers taken while they were getting ready for their performance.

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