What becomes of a mutilated woman? In her solo piece Shoorpanakha: A Search, Parshathy J Nath reclaims a silenced voice from the Ramayana—and redefines contemporary feminist performance. She is in conversation with Vinta Nanda.

In Shoorpanakha: A Search, theatre artist Parshathy J Nath reimagines the most marginalised woman of the Ramayana through a powerful solo performance that fuses Koodiyattam, Kattaikkuttu, Parai drumming, and Oppari lament traditions. Premiering in Thrissur and supported by India Foundation for the Arts and Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund, the production offers a bold feminist inquiry into desire, mutilation, and mythic erasure. This evocative, multidisciplinary theatre piece explores what happens when a silenced epic figure finally speaks—and how an actor discovers a new performance language in the process.

I have not seen Shoorpanakha: A Search. I did not sit among the audience at the Black Box in Thrissur on June 6, 2025. I did not witness Parshathy J Nath’s solo performance—her body draped in the weight of centuries, her voice sculpted from a silence too long imposed. But I heard about it. First from her mother, Janaky Sreedharan, who spoke of the show with quiet intensity. Then from Parshathy herself, in a long and thoughtful conversation. What I gathered from their words—and from the project’s meticulous description—is not just a play, but a reclamation, a ritual, and  an actor’s spiritual excavation of myth, memory, and the female body.  

This is a story about Shoorpanakha, a woman who has rarely been given the dignity of complexity. And it is about Parshathy, a performer who saw in that woman not a relic of an epic, but a living wound that needed tending, and a voice that deserved to speak.

The first glimpse I had of this production came from Janaky Sreedharan, herself a noted academic and writer, who shared with me a premiere announcement that read more like a manifesto than a press note. The performance, it said, is inspired by a range of South Indian performative forms. It is the story of an actor’s search—not only into Shoorpanakha, the most vilified woman in the Ramayana—but into her own performative being.

It was Janaky’s pride, but also her alertness to the emotional terrain of the piece, that stayed with me. “It’s not just about myth,” she said. “It’s about what happens when a woman finally gets to tell her story—in her own body, in her own tongue.”

Later, I messaged Parshathy directly. What emerged from our conversation was a layered, passionate unpacking of an artistic process that was at once rigorous, embodied, and deeply political.  

Why Shoorpanakha—and Why Now?

Parshathy was unequivocal when I asked why Shoorpanakha had become her subject, her medium, her obsession.

“She’s the most marginalised character in the Ramayana,” she said. “People reinterpret Sita and Draupadi, but Shoorpanakha remains sidelined—mocked, punished, and then forgotten.”  

For her, Shoorpanakha’s mutilation is not merely a narrative turning point. It is a cultural rupture. “We act like the war started when Sita was abducted. But what about the violent mutilation of a woman who dared to express desire? Isn’t that where the rage begins?” The performance, then, was not about retelling the Ramayana—it was about re-listening to what has been left out. “Myth,” she said, “is not dead text. It’s a living wound.”

An Actor’s Journey Through the Body

To prepare for the work, Parshathy spent a year and a half immersing herself in traditional performance forms across Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Pondicherry. Her process was physical, geographic, and introspective. She trained in Koodiyattam, beginning with the Shoorpanakhankham segment that depicts Shoorpanakha’s humiliation. From there, she moved to Kanchipuram to study Kattaikkuttu—a Tamil street theatre form marked by its boldness and exaggerated masculinity.

“That masculine energy matched Shoorpanakha’s untamed, instinctive presence,” she told me. “It was liberating.”

In Pondicherry, she took up Parai drumming—an assertive, ritual form rooted in Dalit protest—and Oppari, a Tamil funerary lament tradition. “Parai gave me rage. Oppari gave me sorrow. Both were necessary to inhabit her.”

Each form did not just inform her acting; it altered her relationship with the stage. “I wasn’t just learning technique. I was searching for a performance body that felt like mine—unburdened by colonial legacies or classical hierarchies.”

She also trained in Mizhavu, the ritual drum played in Koodiyattam. “It’s a male-coded instrument,” she explained. “It has to be ritually purified before performance. But in Adishakti’s pedagogy, it becomes a site of emotional rhythm. Playing it helped me imagine Shoorpanakha’s inner pulse.” 

The title Shoorpanakha: A Search is precise. The play is not a retelling, but a pursuit—of a character’s lost voice and an actor’s emergent form. “I was searching for Shoorpanakha’s body,” Parshathy said, “and I was also searching for my own.”

This dual search lies at the heart of the work. It’s a collision of interior and exterior, mythic and personal, structured training and instinctive rebellion.

Having trained across institutions like Ninasam, Adishakti, and Natanakairali, Parshathy has long practiced under different directorial visions. But this was her first creation—self-driven, self-staged, self-examined. “It demanded that I bring together everything I’d learned—and unlearn what no longer served me.”

Mentorship, Form, and the Feminine Body

Though solo in performance, Shoorpanakha: A Search was shaped by a wide community. Chief mentor Sharanya Ramprakash offered dramaturgical and emotional guidance. Kapila Venu, Ajithlal Sivalal, and Fawas Ameer Hamsa brought creative support. Her trainers across disciplines—Aparna Nangiar in Koodiyattam, Rajeevan and Harihara Guptan in Mizhavu, P Rajagopal and Hanne de Bruin in Kattaikkuttu, Gangai Master in Parai, and Thiruvenkatachami in Oppari—offered both form and philosophy.

What emerged was not a pastiche of styles but a fusion born from lived absorption. “Every form changed how I stood, breathed,” Parshathy said. “The performance is not a display of techniques. It is a body that has been through all those traditions—and come out speaking its own language.”

The Premiere in Thrissur: A Homegrown Return

When Shoorpanakha: A Search premiered at the Black Box on June 6, it was not just the culmination of research. It was a return. Parshathy grew up in Thrissur, studying dance, attending music classes, and absorbing the International Theatre Festival that brought global performances into the heart of Kerala.

To perform this work there, among friends, mentors, and strangers, was deeply significant. “People came up to me after the show—some crying, some silent. They said it was like seeing a mirror of their own lives.”

Audience members, she told me, responded not just intellectually but bodily. “One person said they felt the music in their chest. Another said they laughed and cried—sometimes at once.”

That reception affirmed what she had long believed—that mythology, when reclaimed with care, can open up new spaces of identification and grief.

I asked Parshathy whether she saw the work as feminist. Her answer was layered. “Yes, it’s feminist. Not because it ‘represents women,’ but because it reclaims space. Because it says: here is a woman defined only by her punishment—and I refuse that definition.” 

In her performance, Shoorpanakha is not reformed, nor redeemed. She is complicated, dangerous, desiring, wounded. She is a figure who refuses to be disciplined into mythic closure.

And she is, perhaps, closer to us than we think. “Shoorpanakha is every woman punished for being too much,” Parshathy said. “Too loud. Too sexual. Too angry. Too unapologetic.”

What Happens After the Search?

Though the premiere is done, the search continues. The performance, supported by India Foundation for the Arts under the Arts Practice Programme and made possible by the Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund, is likely to travel across performance platforms, academic spaces, and cultural circuits.

But for Parshathy, the journey is still interior. “This was a beginning. I don’t think I’ve ‘found’ Shoorpanakha. I think I’ve found a way to begin listening to her—and through her, to myself.”

She hopes the piece encourages others—especially young artists—to dig deep, question myths, and trust their instincts. “Reclaiming a voice is not about shouting louder,” she said. “It’s about listening better. To the silences. To your own body. To the stories left untold.”

Shoorpanakha: A Search may be a performance, but it is also a proposition: What becomes of a mutilated woman when we finally let her speak? What myths break apart when we listen to the ones who were never meant to survive them?

I did not see this work. But I carry it with me—through the fire of a mother’s pride, and the fierce, lyrical intensity of a daughter’s search.