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About 25 km northeast of Evoor is Tiruvalla, where a
20th century drawing teacher's experiment once rescued a night-long show
from an unexpected shortage of make-up artistes. In the process, K.P.
Ramakrishna Panikkar, the lone make-up man at the venue, altered forever
the looks of the Kathakali performer. To hasten the long-drawn facial
chutti work, he used white paper instead of thick rice paste for the
raised border from the cheeks down to the chin. The role of the rice
paste was reduced to a glue, lining the foundation to stick the paper.
By the early 1940s, this innovation became the norm across Travancore.
('Green room with a new view' by Sreevalsan Thiyyadi, The Hindu Friday Review, Sept 18, 2020)
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