Kapila Venu in "The Abandonment of Sita" at Asia Society Rama is the hero of the ancient Indian epic the Ramayana, but heroes don't always behave admirably. Ian Douglas for The New York Times The Abandonment of Sita The kuttiyattam performer Kapila Venu played all the characters in this ancient Indian epic at Asia Society. In one seldom-celebrated episode Rama, having rescued his wife, Sita, from a demon, requires her to prove her chastity in a trial by fire. She passes the test, but rumors persist, and so he abandons his pregnant wife in the forest. The forest animals weep with her. A sage takes her in and trains her twin sons, and years later, when Rama discovers them, he rejoices. But still he requires of his wife another trial by fire. The mistrust is too much for Sita to bear, and she asks the earth to open up and swallow her. This was the story recounted in an extraordinary performance at Asia Society on Saturday (co-produced by Sanskriti Center). "The Abandonment of Sita" was a highly rare glimpse into kuttiyattam, an ancient form of temple theater from the Kerala region in South India. All the characters were portrayed - in mime and occasional bursts of song - by one woman, the astounding Kapila Venu. She was not exactly alone. Behind her onstage were three drummers, providing accompaniment that for dramatic pacing and intensity few film composers with an orchestra at their disposal could match. Through speed, volume, rhythm and pitch they heightened emotions. The adjusting tension of the drum skins conveyed the tension of the narrative, never slack and sometimes stretched to the breaking point. The drums also described action. You could follow the trajectory of a loosed arrow in Ms. Venu's eyes, but you could hear it just as clearly. Often the percussion was busiest when Ms. Venu was at her most still: the drama was internal. In dance terms her performance was relatively stationary. Though the peacocks that stop dancing to cry with Sita and the martial education of the boys occasioned deep lunges and low jumps, Ms. Venu did much of her storytelling while seated. Her wedding cake of a headdress, from which hair cascaded to her calves, must have limited movement, but the style seemed statuesque in principle. It was mainly Ms. Venu's upper body that so vividly represented the action and emotion, striking out in rage (the drum crack!) and sinking back into grief. Most remarkable was her face. At points of dramatic revelation, Ms. Venu's eyebrows mirrored the speed-blurred pistoning of the drummers" hands. Over the 100-minute performance it seemed as though you could count the number of times she blinked on your own two hands. Her face was often masklike, her watery, bloodshot eyes bespeaking some altered state. But at times the mask softened to heart-stabbing effect. The animals" compassion for Sita was one of the most human moments. Compassion for Sita was the driving focus. Though Ms. Venu played all the characters, a half-dozen or so, the perspective was unmistakably Sita's (a savvy choice to present to an American audience). Rama's final desperation as he lost his wife to the earth, fainting as she had fainted before, was poignant but unmistakably deserved. In addition to a synopsis in the program and an introduction by Ms. Venu's father (who runs the Natanakairali center in India where she trained under Ammannur Madhava Chakyar), scene-by-scene supertitles helped a novice not feel abandoned. Even so, I can't pretend to have followed everything. Kuttiyattam is an art of elaboration, and I sensed much more than I understood. What surprised me most was the huge emotional impact of this exceedingly foreign form. Ms. Venu's eyes watered from effort. I learned later that their redness was from a dye. Yet she gave a sense of herself behind the characters, feeling their sadness. Even if this was all artifice, she made that sadness felt.