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Adishakti was created in 1981 as a theatre company in Mumbai. Its main activity then was to create performances, which were already scripted. Some of these performances were Sophocles' Oedipus , (1982) Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead , (1983 ) Euripedes' Trojan Women (1984).
From 1985 onwards Adishakti started creating its own texts. Thus A Greater Dawn in 1992, Impressions of Bhima 1994, Khandava Prastha 1996, Brhannala 1998, Ganapati 2000, The Hare and The Tortoise 2007. In 2008 Adishakti departed briefly from the text, Ionesco's Rhinocores. This was towards to explore the relevance of Adishakti's performace vocabulary and aesthatic on a pre excisting and non-Indian text. |
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"Excellent performances highlight “Oedipus” The composition and body-lines in the intimate scene between Jocasta and Oedipus displayed the visual sensitivity of the director. The use of eyes was a very good directorial touch that belonged exclusively to Veenapani Chawla"
----Mid Day 26-8-1981.
Naseerudhin Shah in Oedipus
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"Strangely while supposedly revolutionary theatre is becoming decadent, this staging of a Greek tragedy is one of the most progressive endeavors in recent memory. ---it indicates one way out for the state of the art, which seems to have reached stalemate. Veenapani Chawla's version at the Prithvi is a truly modern rending of a classic in a form that restores it to life while rooting it in a vital artistic context."
---- The Sunday Observer 10-5-1984.
Trojan Women, 1984
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"Adishakti's production of Tom Stoppards Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead at the Prithvi is a triumph."
---- The Sunday Observer Mumbai 5-6-1983.
Rosencrants & Guilderstern
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"If Veenapani Chawla can take a Greater Dawn, hailed as a landmark theatre by critics, to other Indian cities, it could well become a major national theatrical event."
---- The Pioneer Delhi 16-3-1992.
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"The humor was superbly paced – stealing in craftily, then going over the top in improvisatory abandon before retuning to the solemnity of the opening. The absence of a prefatory note on the production helped. Much of Bhima's sparkle derived from the fact of an unprepared audience having to discover its way by itself."
----The Pioneer Delhi 25-4-1996
Vinaykumar in Impressions of Bhima
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"Brhannala written, choreographed and directed by Chawla and performed by Vinay Kumar, -- was the most total work of theatre l have yet to witness. I use total because I can't come up with a better word to describe the creators' perfect blend of spoken language, physical body, music and lights"
----The Dance Inside 3-January 2003
Vinaykumar in Adishakti play Brhannala
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| Usha Nangiar in Kandavaprastha - 1998 |
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"Undoubtedly Veenapani Chawla's Ganapati is a radical breakthrough in the history of modern Indian theatre."
----Editorial NFSC Journal 4-7-2001
Adishakti Play Ganapati
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"Watching Adishakti's "The Hare and The Tortoise" during NSD's Theatre Utsav, brilliantly conceived and executed by Director Veenapani Chawla vividly brought home music, dance, movement, craft forms, dialouge integrated in one performance language......"
----The HINDU, Leela Venkataraman, January 2007
Adishakti Play The Hare & The Tortoise
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"Rhinoceros is remarkable for presenting a foreign play using a uniquely Indian Theatre style"
----The HINDU, Vasanthi Sankaranarayanan, 24 October 2008
Adishakti Play Rhinoceros
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READ THE PROGRAMME NOTES OF ADISHAKTIS PLAYS
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I M P R E S S I O N S O F B H I M A
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The heroic status of Bhima of the Mahabharata depends largely on his physical prowess. Impressions of Bhima is a deconstruction of this hero, where the man of physical power and strength becomes in the end a psychological hero. The warrior’s battle is transferred to the field where alone complete victory is possible. Instead of a struggle for transient success, at the end the warrior wants nothing less than an inner victory.
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| IMPRESSIONS OF BHIMA |
Read Programme notes of Impressions of Bhima
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The story of the Mahabharata is woven around the conflict between five brothers, the Pandavas, and their hundred cousins, the Kauravas. Both want to rule the same kingdom; and this is resolved with the great war of Kurukshetra, in which all are killed except these five essential heroes of the epic.
But Arjuna is the preeminent hero. For all the outstanding actions of the story: wife winning, decisive victory in the war, engendering the royal succession; were performed by him. Even in childhood it is Arjuna who stands out by virtue of being the most skillful archer. Having the ability of total concentration upon his target, to the exclusion of all his surroundings.
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BRHANNALA
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Read Programme notes of Brhannala |
Director's Notes & Synopsis
This production is the result of a collaborative project entitled Music as a Text in Kooddiyattam and Contemporary Theatre. One of the aims of the project was to create a theatre piece employing rhythm as a signifier of content. The performance is an interpretation of the birth stories related to the myths of Ganapati/ Martanda.
It is structured in a recurring cycle of creation, celebration, destruction and return, which parallel's the motif in these birth stories. The return is suggested by a re-telling of the myth repeatedly and from different points of view.
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| Read Programme notes of Ganapati |
GANAPATI |
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| T H E H A R E A N D T H E T O R T O I S E |
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Adishakti’s The Hare and the Tortoise is a dramatic meditation on the ethical possibilities inherent in the notion of contemporaneity. All too often our lives are overdetermined either by the past or by the future, by the strictures of tradition, on the one hand, and of progress, on the other. In this battle between the condition of nostalgia and the desire for achievement, the present is forgotten or, worse, left unthought and unconsidered. Yet it may be the case that it is only in the recurring stillness of the present, of the moment, of what is now, that we can encounter ourselves as we truly are, untrammeled by the burdens of the past or the distorting pressures of the future. So too, it may well only be in the stark integrity of the present time-----when we are not concerned about falling behind or getting ahead-----that our relationships with others achieve a new equity and companionability. Thus, being contemporary, of the time, is linked to the notion of being coeval, of the same time, or, thence, of being together in the same time, or, of keeping time together, and so on. So too, being of the present carries within itself a kin set of etymological resonances, in this case, of being present to both oneself and to others.
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| THE HARE & THE TORTOISE |
Read Programme notes of The Hare & The Tortoise
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Rhinoceros (French original title Rhinocéros) is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. The play belongs to the school of drama known as the Theatre of the Absurd. The play explores the themes of conformity, culture, philosophy, and morality. Issues which are increasingly relevant in today’s changing socio-political landscape.
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| Read Programme notes of Rhinoceros |
RHINOCEROS |
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