A scene from Toye, featuring Jyoti Dogra

Girish Karnad’s famous work Agni Aur Barkha has found a new expression in theatre artist Jyoti Dogra’s Toye that will be staged in the city for the first time. A Sanskrit term for “water”, Toye is a devised piece that examines the actor’s body in performance. While the narrative outline of Toye is guided by Karnad’s text, the performance language of the play is its very own. Explaining this form of theatrical expression, Dogra says, “This is very different from the movements of a dance form. In fact, this is not based on a movement aesthetic. Think of any kind of impulse and how does the body understand it — it could be hunger, anger, love, anything. That is what I have tried to incorporate in the play. So, it is the performance of the body which becomes the language that brings the text alive,” explains Dogra. Agni Aur Barkha is inspired by a tale from the Mahabharata and the text explores specific human conditions. “It dates back to the vedic times, where people are reeling under a seven-year famine. It deals with the politics of power, of knowledge, of gender,” she says.