Before I share with you my impressions about the two Adishakti productions that I saw at the Prithvi Festival in November 2009, an introduction to this theatre compay will be useful. The following note is courtesy Adishakti''s official website-www.adishaktitheatrearts.com

The Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Arts and Research (ALTAR), Pondicherry is a theatre, dance, music and a shadow puppetry troupe involved in the continuous advancement of contemporary theatre in India.

It was established as a theatre company in 1981 in Mumbai under the leadership of Veenapani Chawla, who now works as its Managing Trustee and its Artistic Director. The group''s main activity then was to create text-based performances. Adishakti started with Sophocles'' OEDIPUS (1982), Tom Stoppard''s ROSENCRANTZ AND GILDERSTERN ARE DEAD (1983) and Euripedes'' TROJAN WOMEN (1984).

1985 saw Adishakti creating its own texts. A GREATER DAWN (1992), IMPRESSIONS OF BHIMA (1994), KHANDAVA PRASTHA (1996), BRHANNALA (1998), GANPATI (2000), THE HARE AND THE TORTOISE (2007) are some of the productions that were conceptualized and produced by Adishakti. Most of these have been written and directed by Veenapani Chawla. Her work has toured India as well as internationally.

Since 1987 Veenapani has been engaged in research towards creating a performance methodology based on old knowledges. This methodology involves a physical craft to facilitate the actor''s vocal, bodily and psychological expression. She has been disseminating this through workshops, performances and papers at Adishakti and other national and international venues.

Adishakti''s idea of a performance is to devise it through constant research. It has its own devised methodology of honing the actor''s physical, vocal and psychological skills by putting to use some of India''s traditional knowledges in performance techniques that include Kalaripayattu, breath practices from Koodiyattam and the rhythm practices that accompany a Koodiyattam performance.

Adishakti aims at seeking out the fundamental principles underlying these practices and make them applicable to a wide constituency of performers: those from different cultural and aesthetic contexts and from different kinds of contemporary and traditional performance. Adishakti believes that ''Theatre''s inimitable strength is the live, sensorial, presence of the performer. Unlike the actor in cinema, the audience can almost touch, smell, feel, and taste the actor in the theatre.''

The Prithvi Festival''s theme- ''Theatres of India'' this year would have remained incomplete without the inclusion of a company like Adishakti. With its cutting edge productions that have already made their mark, Adishakti remains to be one of the foremost theatre repertories in the country to look out for.

IMPRESSIONS OF BHIMA

Audre Lorde exclaimed, ''When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.'' I wonder whether Veenapani Chawla stumbled upon this quote before she wrote and directed IMPRESSIONS OF BHIMA. Because it is in the essence of this statement that the beauty of this production lies.

Bhima, undoubtedly the symbol of power and strength in the Mahabharata decides to come out of his slumber and narrate to the world his side of the story. In a solo performance by Vinay Kumar, one sees the childlike innocence of the warrior behind an armour of steel and the curious naivete of the second Pandava who had a lion''s share in their victory.

The story starts with Bhima narrating the first instances of his life as a warrior. The child in him wonders why Arjuna always enjoys the upper hand when it comes to warfare when he too displays the same prowess, if not more. What he doesn''t understand though is that he lacks the charisma that Arjuna carries. Vidura often refers to him as ''manda'' - the slow one. In this portrayal of Bhima''s self- examination, Kumar becomes a child and questions the audience about this differential treatment. As a consequence, hearts reach out to Bhima and suddenly this shadowed character of the Mahabharata takes centre-stage.

Chawla uses humour as a definitive means of communication in this play. She cashes on the innocence and naivete of Bhima and successfully arouses empathy towards him. At places the humour is so contemporary that it also makes a statement about popular cinema in South India. Here, Bhima (and the musicians) put on dark goggles and go into a short rap. Chawla also employs the ''make and break'' technique in her narration. As the story is proceeding and the scene is rising in its drama, Kumar suddenly breaks out of his mood, goes to the musicians, takes out a piece of paper hiding behind somewhere and checks if he is delivering the right lines. This sudden break grows on the audience to give them a breather to analyse the character. The actor and the character here become indistinguishable as one doubts whether it is Kumar''s forgetfulness or Bhima''s ''manda''ness.

As Bhima goes on narrating the injustice done to him by his own people, one sees that his love for them hasn''t been affected. His only effort is to understand himself from the inside as others are seeing him from the outside. And this struggle gives rise to a brilliant dramatic effect. Bhima comes to realize that power alone is useless. The image of Bhima as the headstrong, power-steered he-man suddenly dissolves. The depiction of it, though funny, and often resembling a stand-up comedy on Bhima, makes the whole experience more disturbing.

Towards the end, one feels for Bhima and wishes he was not treated the way he was. As Bhima approaches his end, he thinks for a moment and then literally kicks away the thought to vow to live on forever through his story. Here he quotes Suda saying ''stories never end.'' Still one wants to hear more about him and know more of him. The pathos created makes one wonder as to why he did not know about this earlier. In that sense, the production helps in giving Bhima his deserved place in history.

RHINOCEROS

Ionesco''s take on the sudden upsurge of Communism, Fascism and Nazism in a time preceding the second world war, is a play that portrays the happenings in a small nameless French town when the locals find out that a disease called ''rhinoceritis'' has hit the town. Adishakti''s foremost and celebrated actor Vinay Kumar dons the role of a director in this production and sees him switching roles with the founder Veenapani Chawla, who acts in the play. This production is believed to be Kumar''s take on the Gujarat riots and the events that prompted it.

Playing the text in a very Adishakti-style (making it more visceral than just an exchange of lines), the actors marched and jumped, thumped and stamped on the stage only to make it seem like lines spoken with movements strewn in between. The essence of the play, which lay in depicting how a silly intellectual epidemic catches up, seemed to get lost in the director''s bid to stress on the physicality.

Rhinoceros narrates the story of Berenger, a modest alcoholic who attempts to save the entire town from turning into rhinos. Ionesco''s metaphor of the pachyderm applies very well to the mindset of a mob who remains unaffected by sane thought under the effect of the silly intellectual epidemic. The epidemic infects their sensibilities to such deep extents that it is impossible for a handful of revolutionaries to inject logic in such large number of people. As Ionesco says, 'I don''t know if you have noticed it, but when people no longer share your opinions, when you can no longer make yourself understood by them, one has the impression of being confronted with monsters-rhinos, for example.'

Berenger in the play depicts such a revolutionary who feels he is confronted by the mosnters. All his attempts to drive his fellow friends away from believing in the mad epidemic fail. Some retort to it out of admiration, some because they think that in order to stop people from becoming rhinos, it is important to understand what rhinos are and some just because they can''t see themselves in a position different from the rest. Ionesco writes craftily and the drama grows exponentially starting with the spotting of rhinos by the locals and rising up to all of them eventually ''metamorphosising'' themselves - and that too willingly towards the end.

Actors play multiple characters in Kumar''s production and although the play somewhat takes you away from the surreal experience of the onslaught, it does leave you with moments to wonder. Particularly the scene when town folk are discussing about the possibility of a real rhino existing in the town, they decide a logician should be summoned to solve their problem. The promising logician marches heroically and shows off his logical skills. The stupid folk ( as they are) blindly follow him into a convoluted derivation about the fact of the existence of rhinos. In the end, what they are left with are various possibilities to which none of them could confirm and yet all are impressed. Kumar''s choreography here actually gives us an image of the people being led into the logician''s silly calculation as actors march around the stage following him with their heads bent and eyes piercing through the dust.

The lighting plays an important role in creating the image of the rhino. Green lights across the backdrop work as that image throughout the play. Kumar used minimal sets. Blocks were used mainly that were multi-purpose. They gave the play a very raw, dry feel. A major feature of the play was the music. Kumar opted for contemporary western music that added to the dryness. Towards the end, Berenger''s will to fight till the end is beautifully narrated through live singing. A guitar accompanying actor Arjun Shankar''s husky baritone ends the play on a mysterious note. What happens of the lone revolutionary, we all know.

*Asmit Pathare is a young theatre enthusiast. His theatre experience dates back to his college days in Sangli. He has actively participated and assisted in various theatre productions. He writes poetry too and has his own blog.