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Padmavati Rao: A Life of Theater Activism and Unbound Creativity


I’m starting with a disclaimer. It is impossible to map all the things that Padmavati Rao has done and continues to do. She has worked as an actor, writer, playwright, translator, puppeteer, storyteller, assistant director, dubbing director, dialogue writer, poet, artist, eco-activist, school teacher, theatre facilitator, farmer, and even created a refrigerator (yes, you read that right) that can run without electricity.

Padmavati’s work has—both literally and metaphorically—spanned different locations in time, space, and intent. Yet, speaking to her, one can feel the gentleness of her strength, see a stubborn love for life (despite the pain that life can bring), and sense her childlike glee about her next creative foray. When Padmavati Rao made her big screen debut in Girish Karnad’s Kannada film “Ondanondu Kaladalli,” she was a 15-year-old schoolgirl called Akshatha Rao from erstwhile Bombay. At 17, she became a popular actor after essaying the role of Geetha in a Kannada film of the same name. Exasperated by the fame the film brought her, she cut her hair to enjoy the small joys of walking on MG Road in Bangalore, “without being interrupted by fans.” To this day, she is referred to as the “Geetha film heroine.” It makes her happy that “Geetha—the feisty girl in love with life, is remembered for what she was.”

Even before that unexpected call from cinema and adulation, Padmavati was actively pursuing Marathi, Hindi, and Gujarati theatre in Bombay, learning the tropes of acting and theatre-making with the likes of Balraj Sahni, A.K Hangal, and Shaukat Azmi (Shabana Azmi’s mother) at the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA). Her average day as a college student involved traversing across Bombay by bus, train, and on foot—taking French classes before college, going for rehearsals and shows after college, and getting home late at night. She fully credits her parents for the foundation she and her sister Arundhati Nag got, not just in theatre practice, but also in life. “We were encouraged to spread our wings and fly,” says Padmavati. There were ground rules though: they had to inform their parents about who they would be with, where, roughly when they would get back, and a phone contact (only landlines, of course) had to be shared for emergencies. Any mistakes or wrong choices only brought them closer to their parents.

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. “And we made plenty of mistakes,” says Padmavati.

The challenges and joys of working in those times taught her a lot. When an indefinite power cut loomed before the performance of “Khelaiyya,” a hugely popular Gujarati musical directed by Mahendra Joshi, the audience refused to take a refund and insisted that the play be performed, even if in candlelight. And so it was. “Candles were bought out from the area around Prithvi Theatre and the audience watched the whole play in candlelight, singing and clapping along!” Padmavati recalls. Traveling with plays at that time, she learnt about “the world and worldliness,” about the synergy between audience and actors that dynamically makes a play come alive and become a shared experience.

Watching her play a grieving mother in “Apne Ghar Jaise” during the Remembering Veenapani Festival at Adishakti Theatre, Auroville, earlier this year, revealed how Padmavati held the audience in the grip of her character’s doubts, sorrows, questions, and prejudices, even though she was the only one on stage for the most part. She masterfully took the play to a note that left most in the audience close to tears.

Her process as an actor involves approaching every character with complete humility and surrender, she says. She lets the director, “who has been with the character for much longer,” shape her performance completely. Padmavati believes that playing characters unlike oneself opens tremendous growth avenues for the actor within while also teaching empathy. She advocates the power of “emptying out” before donning a role and stresses the importance of doing one’s homework as an actor. She is said to have learned to knit, skillfully and quickly, to better play her role in the Hindi film “Te3n,” alongside Amitabh Bachchan.

Speaking about her recent work as Deva in Prime Video’s Tamizh series, “Sweet Kaaram Coffee,” Padmavati expresses delight about getting to work with veteran actor Lakshmi, “who was a star when I was in my teens.” Padmavati’s work as an actor on stage, the big screen, and the small screen take away nothing from her passion to work with and for the earth through the Sarsayee Foundation—a not-for-profit entity that she founded to train young people in engaging deeply and compassionately with ecology and the arts. We need to “find the forest within and nurture the forest without,” says Padmavati, who believes that the world can change only when we collectively transform from “human doings to human beings.”

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