Kattaikkuttu Sangam and Gurukulam

The Kattaikkuttu Sangam is a social mission-driven, grassroots performing arts organisation that uses the integration of academic education and performing arts training to promote, contemporise, and make sustainable the unique theatre form of Northern Tamil Nadu (India)-Kattaikkuttu.

Founded in 1990 by actor, director and playwright Perungattur P. Rajagopal, together with theater scholar Dr. Hanne M. de Bruin and 15 actors and musicians, the Kattaikkuttu Sangam is a not-for-profit initiative that aims to uphold the prestige and quality of the Kattaikkuttu theater.

From 2002 to 2020 the Sangam has provided rural children access to Kattaikkuttu training in combination with fully-fledged education and comprehensive care under its flagship program, the Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam. The Gurukulam closed its doors in March 2020. During its 18 years in existence this unique residential theater school trained, educated and cared for more than 750 students.

They are now moving back to their core business of making and performing theatre. They envisage the future of the Sangam as an indigenous knowledge centre where embodied theater know-how is preserved and made available to current and future generations. In its new format, the Sangam will continue to represent Kattaikkuttu as a part of the living intangible cultural Tamil heritage; a theater tradition that constantly refreshes and reinvents itself artistically through sharing knowledge and know-how with those genuinely interested in an experiential “knowing through performing”.