Strength, thy name is woman

It is all hurried. Padmapriya sits on a chair, a hand on her forehead, when she hears about an interview. She has just begun to learn her part in a grand performance to be held in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday. “Please sir, let me learn this song,” she asks Soorya Krishnamoorthy, the director of the show. He says, it’s alright, let’s get it done in five minutes. So after a hurried interview when she and other performers of the day — 20 in all — talked, Padmapriya asks Krishnamoorthy about Unniyarcha, whom she will be playing. The show — Stree Sakti or Women Power — is a special tribute to 20 iconic women that Kerala has seen.

“A private channel wanted a show to distribute Stree Sakti Awards. So we thought of doing a programme on great women who have contributed so much to Kerala,” Krishnamoorthy says, sitting at his residence in Thiruvananthapuram, where some of the women performers have gathered to rehearse. They will enact 20 real and mythical characters through dance or drama or simple recitals. “There will be characters from puravrutham (mythology), history, there will be those who left us, and contemporaries,” he adds. Some of these contemporaries will be present on the occasion — actor Sheela, after her most famous character ‘Karuthamma’ (for Chemmeen) is screened, activists K. Ajitha and C.K. Janu, writer Sugathakumari and politician K.R. Gowri Amma. Actor P.K. Rosy will also be commemorated.

The show will begin with Padmapriya enacting Unniyarcha in a dance piece. Talking of Unniyarcha, she slips into the topic of women and equality, started by dancer sisters Veena and Dhanya Nair. The duo, who will be doing a dance introduction to the show and have a performance called Sooryakanthi, says it is great to learn about all these characters they are portraying.  “When women today are fighting for the rights to take off clothes, there were those who fought to wear them in the past. If you look at history, women have been so strong. We talk of women’s equality, but women are powerful in their own way, there is nothing they can’t achieve,” the Nair sisters say.

Navya Nair at rehearsal

That’s where Padmapriya, known to movie audiences through many movies including the latest Chef, has a slight disagreement. There is inequality, she says, “in terms of the space, opportunity and access to opportunity that women get, whether it is created by structure or not”. There is also an issue of sexism and racism, she feels. “I agree it is not new. Truths and realities keep changing every passing time. For me it is an interesting experience,” she says. Time is running out and Padmapriya goes back to the song she will dance to. Helping her with the meaning of the song is Meera Nair, poet and another performer of the day. Meera is very happy that she gets to pay tribute to a favourite writer, Kamala Surayya. “It is a very powerful poem. It is the condensation of ‘My Story’, starting with her childhood. The entire story is in the form of a poem,” she says. Meera is also a popular anchor on television.

More familiar faces come from different corners of the house and the stage outside — Ganesham. Actor Navya Nair and a small team of dancers have been rehearsing what would be the final piece of the show. “I am representing K.R. Gowri Amma. It is a kind of contemporary dance. She is such a powerful woman who could rule a place. No woman can be like that. More than Communism, the dance piece is about activism. I will be wearing a red and white Sari, and in the end all of us would walk to the audience,” she says. Only Kavitha is left in the room now. She is playing the iconic Thathri Kutty, banished by elders of the Nambudiri caste that she belonged to, for alleged relations with men.

Meera

“The stage will show me indoors, as the trial goes on outside. When the trial ends and I am banished, I tell them: ‘You all celebrate your victory, but I am going with a child in my womb. I know it will be a girl, and she will be called Ammu. She will come back and question you’,” Kavitha says. She is really happy to say ‘Ammu’, the name that has appeared in all of Soorya Krishamoorthy’s theatre productions.
Others, not available for the interview but who would perform, are actors Asha Sharath (playing Umayamma Rani), Rachana Narayanan Kutty (Isakki Chaannaatti), Lakshmi Gopalaswamy (Arakkal Beevi), Divya Unni (Alphonsamma), Methil Devika (Nangeli) and Gauri/ Joemol (Indulekha). There are also performances by Nrithyakshetra E.K.M. (Kalyanikutty Amma) and Gayathri E.S. (Balamaniyamma). "And this is only the first session," Krishamoorthy says. There will be another session to pay tribute to more women.