THE TRAINING GROUND FOR STARS

Far from Mumbai, Adishakti offers stars a rigorous, soul-deep actor-training experience rooted in Indian traditions

- BY POULOMI DAS

Far from Mumbai’s smog, screen tests, and horn-blared hustle, a red mud path winds through the lush greenery on the fringes of Pondicherry and lands you at a theatre sanctuary that has become Bollywood’s most unexpected training ground. At the Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Arts, a new generation of actors are learning how to move, breathe, and break down on cue by plunging deep into their bodies and souls. Spread over three acres, the campus feels more forest than facility: thatched roof rooms tucked under canopy neem trees, rehearsal spaces open to the sky, birdsong replacing ringtones. It’s part acting school, part spiritual rest — and entirely unlike anything else in India.

It’s this promise of reinvention that has pulled the likes of Richa Chadha, Swara Bhasker, Ali Fazal, Adarsh Gourav, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Kalki Koechlin, Naga Chaitanya, Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, and Zahan Kapoor to Adishakti time and again. Over 10 days here, actors immerse themselves in a rigorous 12-hour daily schedule that blends breathwork, rhythmic movement, voice training, meditative practices, and even underwater exercises — each designed to awaken what the school calls the “source of performance energy.”

That Adishakti taps into something elemental is evident: Kapoor, Kusruti, and Bhaskar have each returned more than once. Fazal, meanwhile, is so invested that he now sits on the board. And at the Waves Summit this May, Adishakti received its starriest stamp of approval yet: Aamir Khan not only recommended the lab to aspiring performers but also expressed his own desire to attend it someday.