Rejected and reviled — a deadly combination in a woman scorned and an encapsulation of how Shoorpanakha from The Ramayana has been viewed down the ages. Well, every villain has an origin story and Shoorpanakha: A Search is hers. Presented by Parshathy J Nath, this piece not only looks at the woman within the demon princess, but also sheds light on the fiends and divas that dwell within each of us.
There is scant mention of Shoorpanakha in mythology and the ones that occur, show her in a most unflattering light, which makes the choice of her as a central character in any performance an interesting one.
Parshathy says Shoorpanakha’s story stayed with her because it was a traumatic experience.
“I realised that men treating her with triviality was something most women, myself included, have undergone. More than her nose being mutilated, I believe it would have been far more humiliating to have her emotions made light of and be subject to suggestions that she offer her love to others.”
Parshathy emphasises that Shoorpanakha is “not a rant against men”, though it happens to women in India more often than not given the patriarchy and dating culture prevalent here.
“I wanted to explore this binary of Shoorpanakha and Sita, and how societal standards for beauty seem to follow a stereotype.”
Parshathy J Nath as and in Shoorpanakha
| Photo Credit:
PeeVee
At home on stage
Parshathy’s love story with the theatre began with her first school audition at the age of 10. “I was instinctively drawn to theatre; it was not a class or discipline my parents foisted on me — perhaps that is why I was able to explore it to my heart’s content,” says the artiste, who began training in classical dance and vocals at the age of six. “I can still recall the wonder I felt at the transformation that unfolded on stage.”
Though she continued to script and direct plays while in college, her passion took a step back as life and a career got in the way, says Parshathy. As a journalist, she would write about others’ plays debuting in the city, all the while yearning for the stage lights herself.
“In 2017, I participated in a play after a gap of six years and realised how much I had missed it,” she says, adding it was the trigger that brought her back to the theatre. “I was 27 years old at the time and I remember thinking, “If not now, then when?” I knew I had to make a choice and that if I waited longer, I might lose the drive to act.”
Parshathy quit her job as a journalist and went into theatre full time — working with various directors and enrolling at the Ninasam Theatre School in Karnataka in 2019. “Studying at Ninasam was life changing; I got to live and interact with theatre practitioners from rural Karnataka. We would heat water on wood, I picked up Kannada there and I ended up training for a Yakshagana performance.”
Germ of an idea
The seeds for Parshathy’s piece on Shoorpanakha were sown while studying at Ninasam Theatre School in Karnataka and she says the feedback from her mentors gave the play its present shape. “Around that time I attended a Yakshagana performance by Sharanya Ramprakash titled Akshayatra that intersected gender and class, and was multi-layered in depth. It opened my eyes to the many possibilities of this art form.”
“When we think of a play, it is usually the imagery that first comes to mind and I initially envisioned Shoorpanakha as a classical piece with Bharatnatyam and Carnatic music, especially as the protagonist is a mythological character.”
However, since 2021, Parshathy says her depiction of this characterhas been evolving along two lines — of delving deeper into Shoorpanakha’s psyche and of unlearning her body language as a classical dancer in order to fully embody the part she has to play.
Parshathy J Nath as and in Shoorpanakha
| Photo Credit:
PeeVee
“My stint at Adishakthi opened new ideas of crafting a performance piece with my entire body language responding to my training in koodiyattam, kattaikkuttu and other art forms.”
“If I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t be able to do justice to the role since Shoorpanakha was a free-spirited, forest dweller. My experiences in life are vastly different and limited to a classical body language,” she says.
In order to reimagine the character, Parshathy researched Malayalam and Kannada literature only to find minimal references. “Yet, performative traditions such as koodiyattam, had an entire episode detailing Shoorpanakha’s life.”
Parshathy undertook koodiyattam training under Aparna Nangiar as well kattaikkuttu with P Rajagopal and Hanne M de Bruin. She also learnt to play the mizhavu (a percussion instrument) with Kalamandalam Rajeevan and Harihara Guptan. “Its sound played a crucial role in the performance, figuring as almost as another character”. Additionally, she learnt to sing oppari and how to play the parai with Gangai Master and Manimaran.
With light music inspired by folk traditions, Shoorpanakha: A Search which is an hour-long performance includes an original oppari composition by Pa Thriuvenkatachami, crafted specially for this piece produced by The India Foundation For Arts under their Arts Practice programme
Shoorpanakha: A Search will be presented at the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi in Thrissur on June 6, at Ranga Shankara in Bengaluru on June 11, and at the Medai in Chennai on June 22. Information on the tickets priced at ₹299 are available online.
Published – June 05, 2025 07:40 pm IST