Nimmy Raphel on balancing creative and managerial tasks at Adishakti

The Hindu

a day ago

She is called 'the engine of Adishakti' but there's nothing mechanical about Nimmy Raphel. On any given day, you might find her high up on a ladder, deftly fixing a snag during post-midnight light setup in the theatre or somewhere near the office, discussing the finer points of the day's menu, or guffawing with trainee actors at the red-oxide round tables.
Interacting after the 11th edition of the Remembering Veenapani Festival, held recently in Adishakti Theatre, Auroville, Nimmy (also managing trustee) spoke about her relationship with the verdant campus, her work and her mentor Veenapani Chawla (founder of Adishakti). Speaking about balancing managerial tasks with creative roles, she says, 'It is easier to manage all tasks – creative and others, because I do not have an end goal. If I'm making something, it has to be worth my time and the audience's time. Time is the biggest investment an artiste needs to make.'
Nimmy firmly believes in 'accumulated energy' that, she points out, is the way of a 'lot of traditional performers.' She works by 'not doing everything at once' because stories work in mysterious ways, 'generating curiosity and propelling you into unknown paths that can be very scary and uncertain.' Though she thrives on these hidden paths, she's challenged by the lack of structure in Indian theatre, on the production front. 'We do not have real producers in theatre like in music, dance or films but, luckily, because there is an umbrella called Adishakti, we can make work and even take it to places where they cannot pay us but just fund our travel.'
The hard places that even seasoned theatre practitioners traverse become evident when Nimmy says, 'If we say we will go only if there is money, a lot of work will never be shown. Our way is to balance our processes of making and showing work. While travelling with a show, either Vinay (artistic director, Adishakti) or me are thinking about the next project. And when it starts, we slow down to give it time for exploration, for failure, for testing...'
Nimmy stresses the importance of failure, comparing it with 'darkness that offers possibilities.' Success, she says, 'is like blinding white light. Once successful, everybody accepts you but when you fail, nobody pays attention to you. Then, you can do more.' She agrees that this is 'not easy in creative work,' but 'when it's there in the back of the head,' it could be very enabling for a performer, whose body, in her words, 'becomes a living archive' of performances and knowledge systems.
Having emerged from the crucible of Veenapani Chawla's holistic and immersive performance training, Nimmy has written, directed and acted in multiple productions, not just learning technical aspects of theatre-making and multiple musical instruments, but also training many actors, over the last two decades. Though her work brings a feminine gaze to overlooked mythological characters like Tara and Urmila, Nimmy does not believe that artistes create 'so they can talk about politics.' She affirms, however, that it falls upon the artiste to 'address society with their questions,' that may then provoke reflective action.
She likens the actor's breath to a motor that animates emotion. 'If the motor dies, the boat will not move forward,' she says, later speaking of characters such as Araja and Ambika (both from the Adishakti production, Bhoomi, that Vinay Kumar has written and directed) as being at different stages on a continuum of courage. 'Everything is cultivated – creativity and imagination, as also courage,' she says. Calling herself a 'reluctant writer,' she points to the power of 'surrender' in creative work. 'I learnt this from my parents as farmers. You cannot hurry a seed to grow,' says Nimmy.