Annie Katsura Rollins (she/they) is a community arts worker, researcher, and puppetry artist. Finding a sense of much needed belonging in community theatre as a young person, she pursued understanding this feeling of connectedness through the arts with degrees in performance (BFA), theatre performance, direction, and puppetry (MFA) and finally a study in traditional lineages of folk puppetry in China (PhD). She concurrently tested this understanding through over 20 years of professional work in art education, facilitation, and community building.

Since moving to Toronto in 2017, Annie has worked in the community arts sector and co-founded and co-curates with Concrete Cabaret, Toronto’s only experimental puppet slam. Annie is a professor in the University of Connecticut graduate certificate program in puppetry arts. She believes that having the arts in our everyday lives is no longer a luxury but a necessity.