The brief was the oldest travelling theatre in Rajasthan — the kathputli string-puppet show — composed the way a Marwar painter staged a court entertainment. It works because the grammar fits: the performer raised at the centre, an attentive audience ringed around him, a balcony of women watching from above. We kept the cast to the puppeteer, his dholak player, a row of seated children and a few turbaned elders, and let the little draped booth with its king-and-queen marionettes hold the centre. The fort on the hill and the lantern on the ground set the place and the hour; everything else has been pared back so the puppets — and the rapt front row — stay the focus.