The 10th edition of ‘Remembering Veenapani Festival’ (RVF), hosted by Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Art Research (ALTAR), as a tribute to its founder and pioneer in experimental theatre Veenapani Chawla kicks off on April 1.
The free entry festival, from April 1 to 8, offers a varied mix of theatre, dance and music performances, as well as lec-dems and a new conversation series. With a wide cross-section of entertaining, thought-provoking and inspiring offerings, the schedule has been curated with audiences across diverse groups in mind.
The Indo-French play ‘He-Rose’, a collaboration between Adishakti and the ENSATT theatre school, Lyon, will serve as the opening act.
The performance line-up also features Rangashankara; Tamasha Theatre and Dur Se Brothers; dance and dance-theatre by Rama Vaidyanathan and Deepa D (who won this year’s Adishakti Theatriculate Fellowship in support of new work, to be premiered at the festival); and music by Namit Das-Nishant Nagar duo and Adithi Sagar.
The annual festival grew organically out of the gathering of well-wishers who came to pay their respects following Chawla’s demise in November 2014. Since the first edition was held in 2015, marking her birth month, the festival has been presented annually ever since, barring a two-year break during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A festival feature is the Adishakti Gupshup, an interactive encounter between artists and audience in a conversation-style format, which offers a glimpse into creative processes.
“Adishakti has always stood for hybrid and interdisciplinary modalities and the encouragement of pluralistic worldviews,” said Adishakti’s Artistic Director Vinay Kumar.
The festival carries forward Adishakti’s founding principle of enriching communities and strengthening bonds through the arts, with a focus on the future of performance and its potential to be a catalyst to greater change, he said.
It has also helped augment the theatre repertory’s dynamic creation and presentation of new productions, notably the plays Nidrawathwm, Bali, Bhoomi, Urmila and He-Rose.
Adishakti, founded in 1981 by Veenapani Chawla, continues its tradition of non-ticketed shows, largely made possible from crowdfunding and donations by well-wishers.
“Our geographic context, surrounded by four villages in Tamil Nadu, is very important to us. This is the reason why we hold un-ticketed shows,” said Nimmy Raphel, Adishakti artiste and managing trustee.
Over the years, the festival has grown to become widely regarded as one of the highlights of the performing arts calendar in India. In addition to its impact on local communities, it draws audiences from major cities like Chennai and Bengaluru, the hosts said.
