In its third year, the Adishakti Ramayana Festival (16 to 23 February 2011) in Puducherry, a long-term exploration of the plurality of the Ramayana and its prodigious capacity for retellings, proved to be a deeper and even more intense experience than before. As in previous years the focus on diverse performance styles with artistes working with a particular fragment from the epic was retained, but to this was added a strong intellectual component comprising scholars like Romila Thapar, Ashis Nandy, Paula Richman and Gulammohammad Sheikh as well as Paritta Koanantakool and Pornrat Damrhung from Thailand, dancer-critics Sal Murgiyanto and I Wayan Dibia from Indonesia and Eddin Khoo from Malaysia.

As the Prithvi Theatre Festival celebrates the work of Satyadev Dubey, the “most hated and most loved man of modern Hindi theatre” talks of his work and theatre in India.

“I’m not interested in adaptations of Dario Fo anymore though I will listen to an original play as I’m looking for personal perceptions ”