Neil D’Souza as Krishna and Anaka Maharaj-Sandhu as Arjuna in Why Not Theatre’s Mahabharata (Shaw Festival, 2023) | Photo by David Cooper

“Don’t be confused by plots. Within the river of stories flows infinite wisdom. That is your true inheritance.”

This is an early bit of advice from the Storyteller, our narrator (played with warm and diligent serenity by co-creator Miriam Fernandes). A useful and comforting primer, especially for those who did not grow up with these stories, it eases the burden of tracking the precise genealogy and timeline of this multi-generational epic. Letting the feelings and ideas guide me, I always knew where I was in the story, despite not having a hope in hell of remembering each and every name and their place on the family tree.

A Why Not Theatre production, presented in partnership with Canadian Stage, Mahabharata, Parts 1 & 2 is a theatrical rendering of the ancient Sanskrit text foundational to Hinduism. Holding firm in its rich gestalt for four and a half hours, it is, at once, both grand and wholly intimate. Pulling poetry from Carole Satyamurti’s Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling, creators Ravi Jain and Fernandes draw us into a world that is, at once, mythic and fully human—the sort of fervent experience that feels like a vital offering. Continue Reading