I must admit that I was extremely nervous about attending the Source of Performance Energy workshop at the Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Arts and Research in Puducherry. The biggest worry on my mind was that I had tossed up acting a while ago in favour of sitting at a desk and writing plays. I was dreading the prospect of actually going back to saying lines, as opposed to cursing under my breath every time a line was miffed, paraphrased or twisted by a performer in a way it was not meant to be twisted. I figured I was at least half-prepared, since I am always happy to do cartwheels, forward rolls, backward rolls - anything other than speaking a role. In addition the Adishakti workshops have acquired a bit of lore, mostly involving the intensity and stamina required to last through them and also the agony of the sessions on rhythm and percussion. "I came out with blisters and bruises! My hands were black and blue. - All the small bones in my hands shattered and now I can't hold chopsticks. - You have to get up at seven in the morning… every day!" - were some of the horrific statements I heard from a number of serious actors. What follows are my personal notes from the workshop - in no particular order, and organised with no particular logic…
Pic by Sharavana RaghavanThe first thing I realise in the workshop is how much we take for granted the existence of some body parts - small muscles in the eyes, the diaphragm, the muscles of the back, quadriceps and of course the hamstrings and thighs. The performer's tool is the body and the amount of energy spent in fine tuning the body, is directly visible in the calibre of the performer. The training at Adishakti extends far beyond doing weights and buffing up, it focuses on manipulating much subtler energies…
On the evening before the start of the workshop we receive folders (which had disconcerting 3D orcas on them) that outlined the structure of the workshop. At seven in the morning we would start with 15 minutes of eye-exercises, then it was Kalaripayattu till 8:45 am. Then some voice work before we adjourned for breakfast. The group would then split into two - one group would work with breath practices for psychological expression and the other on text. After a tea break, the groups would switch. Then it was lunch at one, a snooze break from two to three and then the Koodiyattam rhythm session, another break, then it was working with body centres and the last session before dinner was use of rhythm in performance. Then if you had any energy you could flop into the pool or bed, depending on which you thought more relaxing.
Vinay Kumar is a rock star. I am transported to the first moment of wonder that Adishakti created in my mind. It is 2004 and the Ranga Shankara has just been built. I have carefully budgeted and bought all my tickets well in advance for select shows of the opening festival. It is with some alarm that at a show titled Ganapati I am handed a flyer that has detailed notes to the play. If you need notes to see a play I wondered, there is something quite wrong with the play. As the show began, I stared at the performers, clueless. I was watching a code I had never seen, let alone understood - rhythm had replaced text as a signifier of meaning. It was like having a carpet yanked out from under your feet. And then Vinay Kumar whacking away at a mizhavu pulls a rabbit out of a hat, one minute he is playing the mizhavu, next he cartwheels out - magically displacing himself from one position to another on stage. My jaw dropped. It was like (if you forgive the hyperbole) a one-inch punch. You see it work but you simply don't understand the physics that goes into it.
The first few session of breath work leave me mystified. We are working on shrungara - a positive energy that fills one with a sense of well being - a vague definition to an even vaguer catch-all category of emotion. I am huffing and puffing away like a choo-choo train, but all I am getting is giddy and I feel like my lungs are going to explode. This is all bogus, I think to myself. How the heck am I going to fill the top of my head with air when my respiratory system ends much further south… My pupils are dilating, my eyes are doing funny things and everyone else looks like they have defective electrodes in various parts of their bodies - but no shrungara. After the session I am so oxygenated I feel like I'm going to vaporise. I suppose that counts as a feeling of well being…
Kalari is a load of fun. Vinay and Nimmi move like fluid. My muscle memory is not co-operating. I'm able to learn smaller movements, but unable to string together long sequences. I realise how careless I am with my knees and have to constantly correct my posture. The stances give you the option to really stretch, so I'm constantly trying to put the pressure on my thighs and hamstrings and not blow out my knees and lower back.
My dreaded session is voice work. I'm trying to produce some decent sound and am trying to figure out the right posture for it. I seem to be making a mess of it since Veenapani walks up to me and prods me a little. My hips are too far back. She asks me to root my movement correctly and casually tosses out a leg sideways to demonstrate. I'm trying to figure out how she's adjusted her centre of gravity without registering it in her upper body. I'm also trying to understand how she can toss off a leg, and half her base without affecting the structure sitting on top of it. We do an exercise where we run till we are out of breath and then speak a few lines. I suddenly realise all this breath/centre/chakra business may not be bogus after all…
It's now time to work on the breathing of adbutha - wonder. My cynical circuits have gone back to overdrive. We are making various monkey like sounds and breathing like choo-choo trains on acid. I sound like a monkey and my diaphragm feels like a football and I'm trying to be as awe struck as I can. I make a hash of my attempt at adbutha and figure it's time to abandon this hair-brained idea. It is only after the session I have my aha-moment. I'm jumping about like a monkey going O-O-O when suddenly the air hits a portion of my upper palate and I feel the impulse to jump. What's this then??? - I wonder to myself. I say the sound again and try to isolate the spot in my mouth. Once again I hit the spot and instantly I feel the urge to spring upward and bounce up and down. I resolve to just work in the breath sessions in an open-minded methodical way and not try to come at the exercise from a pre-conceived view point of what the emotion should be.
The mizhavu is the only musical instrument that is meant specifically for theatre. It's a big copper drum that inflicts incredible amounts of pain when played. It's pretty apt as a metaphor for the relationship one has with theatre, as I found out after talking to more than a few people. Politically incorrect as this may be, the mizhavu is a total bitch - unforgiving, unyielding and snooty. You can whack away at it all you like, it will still find a way to screw you over next time round. The rhythm session after lunch is a nightmare. Arvind Rane, the loveable local subversive element had this gem to offer - "If it hurts, hit harder." He was right.
People find different ways to adapt to this gut-wrenching session. A couple of us, find each other in the session as we are able to match rhythms and play together. For some of us it's easier, I switch off my pain circuits and manage to hop-skip-stagger past the hurt into numbness and then I'm working. Perhaps it's the stubborn writer in me that makes me plough through this legendary pain. It also helps to pull your eyes, face and mouth into funny shapes while playing, as well as move your body around; one - it helps mask the pain, two - it makes phrasing easier, you're actually talking with/through the drum, three - anything to take your mind off the pain!
We are working on karuna. It's scary. It's the respiratory equivalent of strangulation. I'm doubly worried because I know I can hold my breath for quite a long while, so I'm sure I'm just going to be sitting around as my heartbeat quickens, my body screams for air and everyone gets bored watching me blow another exercise. Vinay outlines the steps involved, expel air sharply with a 'huh', lock the chest and accelerate the de-oxygenation in the body, which is the absolute reverse of swimming underwater for a long time. It's sickening. Your face melts, as if all your facial features are hot liquid. It feels like stabbing yourself in the chest with a hot knife. I get a sickening sensation of hot sticky black liquid being poured into my insides. I'm in that horrible place, where your body is confronting death and is saying to you - listen buddy, keep screwing around like this and you are a goner. I've promised myself I'm going to go for it. I manage to nudge myself over some sick psychological threshold and take in a huge gasp of air. I bawl my guts out. Yeah, I've got this one figured… Vinay tells us we should be careful with this one, as it is addictive., the same as auto-erotic asphyxiation. For some reason I think of David Caradine. I'm edgy all evening as I try to shake off the after effects of the exercise.
Suresh reminds me of Ganapati. He's always in shrungara - smiling benevolently at some cosmic joke that only a human metronome knows. His hand reminds me of Ganesha's trunk. He dunks his hand on the mizhavu from an inch away and makes it sing like a bell. I'm reminded of the one-inch punch again, you see it work but you simply don't understand the physics that goes into it! I wish I had fatter hands!
Eye exercises with Nimmi are incredible. We work at actively changing the focal length of our eyes and giving energy to the eyes. Vinay says koodiyattam performers do eye exercises with ghee in their eyes. We're slacking off one day and Vinay threatens to put ghee in our eyes. The group is suddenly motivated!
A typical percussion session involves the customary howling in pain as the hands warm up. More than a few people cry and weep. Others book massages, then oversleep, thus finding a creative way to bunk the session. I discover I like percussion! It takes time for me to get my head around the tha-tha-keta-thak-a-tha phrasing, but once it sticks, it sticks - a weird combination of cognitive and muscle memory.
Raudra is a cinch for me. You create and hold tension in the muscles at the back of your neck. I tense my muscles so hard I get a horrible neck ache after. I'm so angry I see red and my entire skull starts vibrating. As with karuna it takes time for the after-effects of the exercise to wear off. The negative emotions seem easier than the positive ones!
Voice work for me is pure torture. Veenapani is patient but I'm making a total hash of everything. My dirty habits take their time leaving and in a panic my voice heads straight for my throat and vocal chords. I've been telling actor's to speak from the stomach, but for the first time I'm figuring out the actual mechanics of making that happen. "Learn to use different resonators", Veenapani says. I'm baffled. On the last day of the workshop I'm aspirating my 'ha' like a champ and suddenly I feel the sound resonating in my chest. My voice hits a register I don't recognise. I'm overjoyed! I manage to move the sound around from my throat to my chest to my head.
For some reason Adishakti facilitates accelerated learning. Maybe it's because we seem to learn faster in groups or maybe it's just the great energy of the place. Everyone is always trying things, so you just pick up stuff a lot quicker. A whole bunch of people make huge progress with their swimming - learning to swim, learning different strokes, handstands, flips - all while we work on our breathing. The swimming exercises take a bit of getting used to since the breathing is not geared towards speed and you don't grab air to the chest, instead you direct it much deeper. I realise that everything, every single thing in the world has rhythm…
What is with these chakras? It really takes a leap of faith to work with them. Initially I was able to concede that these points are directly linked to balance since they are rooted in the spine, but then I figured there's an entire world of exploration there beyond physical matter. While physiology tell us what constitutes our physical body, the inner map of the body is quite different. It's the difference between perceiving gross matter and subtle matter, the difference between the light bulb, the filament and the light itself. There is a self made of gross matter and then there is the subtle self… And here is the big question - how do you become fully aware of that subtle self? I stop myself… Perhaps this line of thinking is out of scope at the moment…
We do small presentations at the end of the workshop. It's amazing to see the learning that everyone takes back. It's also a joy to work with yourself without the pressure of qualitative scrutiny. More than a few pieces move me. There are no less than three rounds of crying. Mysteriously - three pieces involve pornography. One piece is deeply spiritual, it leaves me deeply pensive all evening…
I think we are too easy on ourselves, too satisfied with safety. I think we are too comfortable thinking we know the answers, instead of asking the difficult questions. I ask a theatre senior about his thoughts on Adishakti. "Veenapani operates from a different planet. She sets the bar so high, she's in a different league altogether." I totally agree…
(This article first appeared in the PT Notes November 2010 issue. Read it at www.prithvitheatrenotes.blogspot.com)
