If the names Vaishnavi Suryaprakash and Radhika Mudaliyar sound familiar to you and you think you’ve seen them somewhere… you’re not mistaken! Both Bharatanatyam dancers and actors have performed in the play Counting & Cracking, and Vaishnavi also starred in Nayika: A Dancing Girl. These titles are just two of several South Asian productions in recent years that represent a greater shift towards more theatre created by and for the brown community.   

Now, Radhika and Vaishnavi star in acclaimed S. Shakthidharan’s The Wrong Gods alongside a stellar all-female cast which also includes Nadie Kammallaweera and Manali Datar. The play will follow the journey of and powerful mother-daughter relationship between Nirmala (Nadie Kammallaweera) and Isha (Radhika Mudaliyar). Following tradition, Nirmala farms the soil as her ancestors did, but her daughter Isha desires an education in the city. But life is thrust into turmoil when outsiders arrive in the valley, bringing new technologies and asking Nirmala and her people to pay a heavy price.

As the show’s official synopsis reads, “the choices they make will shape the fate of their family – and thousands of others” and ultimately, it’s “a tale of community, family and freedom in the face of impending globalisation”. 

After wrapping up its Sydney season at Belvoir St Theatre, it’s now running in Melbourne with the Melbourne Theatre Company and there are a few nights left to catch the show. 

Today, we chat to Radhika and Vaishnavi about theatre, representation and of course, The Wrong Gods.

Radhika and Vaishnavi, a huge congratulations on this new project. How did the opportunity come about to be cast in The Wrong Gods, and what made you decide to say yes?

Radhika: Thank you! I attended a reading of The Wrong Gods during the development, before Counting and Cracking, and worked as a young Radha with Shakthi during Counting and Cracking… so that might’ve been my audition. I got offered the role during the Counting and Cracking season. The writing was so interesting and the cast is a dream. Also, the prospect of working with an all female cast is a rarity.  

Vaishnavi: I was lucky to be involved in a first reading of The Wrong Gods script a few years ago. I was taken by the ideas it explores, because these were thoughts that I had been wondering about and grappling for a while. Is this what humanity is? Were we always going to come to this point, behave in these ways? Is change – or a new way of living – even possible on a large scale? 

And then there was the delightful prospect of working again with Shakthi, Nadie and Keerthi. There’s a wonderful respect and joy in these relationships after collaborating over the years on Counting and Cracking, Nayika: A Dancing Girl, and Jungle and the Sea. Little did I know just how much better it would get working with the amazing co-director Hannah, and fellow actors Manali and Radhika!

Radhika, the character of Isha wants something more to what her mother has in mind – a city education, and the opportunity it promises. Is this push-pull between parental expectations and your own something that you’ve experienced in real life as a South Asian Australian? 

Radhika: To some extent, yes. As a child, especially through adolescence and youth, you see yourself as an extension of your parents, partially because of their role in your life and also because of needing permission and validation from your parents. As we grow older, we battle our own needs and reassess what our role in our parents’ life is. We all go through this and it’s especially a longer process in the grey zone for South Asian children. Our world view is created to be so community-oriented and we prescribe to social expectations for most of our formative years. It’s a tough shell to crack. We see this relationship and what it takes to forge one’s own path in Isha’s character in The Wrong Gods. We see how it affects her mother, and we ultimately grow to respect and empathise with both sides. 

Vaishnavi, what similarities do you share with your character, and did you draw on any personal lived experience to get into character?

Vaishnavi: Lakshmi, the character I play, is messily human. Audiences will be tempted to categorise her as a villain, in that very human way our brains want to sort things into black and white. But if they are truly open to the play’s ideas, they’ll realise that no character on stage is ‘correct’ or offers the ‘right’ way forward. They are all trying to fight for what they think is the best thing to do, all things considered. So in Lakshmi’s case, though she recognises there are some costs involved in her ideologies, she has gone through a process where she has weighed everything up and decided that that is OK because that is how the world works.

I think we have all been in a situation where we feel only we know the right thing to do, and have considered the pros and cons, and are trying to impose our decision on someone else!

How would you describe the state of diverse storytelling, and particularly South Asian storytelling, in Australian theatre? What progress has been made, and do we still have a long way to go? 

Vaishnavi: There has been some lovely forward movement in this regard, even in the brief time I’ve been in the industry. I think the success of Counting and Cracking was particularly pivotal in proving that such stories are relatable and interesting to a lot of Australian communities. Without that show, and the resulting new audience base it attracted, I don’t think my solo show Nayika: A Dancing Girl (which melded classical Indian dance and music in its theatrical offering) would have been possible at all.

But our industry needs to continue to grow. I recently spent a year in the UK as a Glorias Fellow for various professional development opportunities. I was gobsmacked by how developed their industry is when it comes to telling/hiring/casting Global Majority stories and storytellers. The energetic approach felt different too; these stories felt like they were sought after and celebrated, rather than something that ‘had’ to be done.

In order to make intriguing or effective art, we need the opportunities to grow our craft. We also need to be in decision-making positions. I was able to observe rehearsals for The Father and the Assassin at the National Theatre in London, and watching director Indhu Rubasingham at work within that institution was so inspiring. She’s now the Artistic Director at the National Theatre. An Indian woman head of the biggest theatre company in the UK? Wild, right? Can we imagine the same here in Aus right now?

What would be your advice to young South Asian Australians hoping to forge a career in the arts, which has arguably lacked cultural diversity until recent years?

Radhika: I am an ardent supporter of doing what excites. It never disappoints, and always leads you down a more interesting path than “planning” something.

Vaishnavi: Do it. Give it your best shot. We need you. Don’t think anything is too ‘small’. You never know what will come from it, or how you will grow from it. So engage in community arts, society theatre, short films, short courses, longer courses. Pitch your idea to independent theatre companies. Don’t be afraid to email – and email again, and again – to have coffee with someone you want to learn something from. (I did that when I was in London and ended up working with the Royal Court Theatre. You have nothing to lose!).

What do you hope audiences ultimately take away from The Wrong Gods?

Radhika: I hope audiences can reflect on their consumption and whose pays for the progress and modernity that we passively engage with, and consider investing more time in interpersonal connections. 

Vaishnavi: I encourage audiences to carve out a safe time-space at some point in the week following the show, and reflect on it. Go for a walk, and think about the relationships in your life. Is there something you want to heal? Is there an understanding or compassion you can show to someone close to you? Sit under a tree, and think about the way you are moving through your life. What are the things you enjoy, or value? Are you happy with what modern society is demanding of you? Is there a new way of living that you would prefer? 

The Wrong Gods is still running at Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio until Saturday, July 12. More information and ticket details can be found here. 

@drawyourbox From the writer of ‘Counting & Cracking’ comes a new production called ‘The Wrong Gods’ – with a special ‘community night’ session on Friday May 16 for a discount price #partner #thewronggods #southasian #theatre #representationmatters #desitok #browntiktok #southasiantiktok ♬ Aesthetic – Tollan Kim

Top image source: Supplied