Chapal Bhaduri alias Chapal Rani or Queen Chapal, leading lady of Bengal’s traditional folk travelling theatre-in-the-round, the Jatra, spent his life playing female characters. Until history changed tradition and women began to play female roles themselves. Out of work, ageing, he turned to a new livelihood: that of playing Sitala, the dreaded goddess of pox and disease, in dramatized performances of the goddess’s sacred saga.
Directed by Naveen Kishore, this intimate video biography brings you face to face with a unique individual, reminiscing about the world of Jatra, discussing what it meant to be a woman night after night, talking for the first time of the woman inside his male body, of troubled sexuality, of a long domestic partnership with his older lover, of the essential loneliness of living as a human being on the edges of conventional society – and showing how he metamorphoses into the goddess in order to perform her story. In the process we get a fascinating view of the professional Jatra, an integral part of the people’s culture in Bengal. In-depth interviews, extracts from milestone fragments of Jatra plays, the makeup process that metamorphoses a man into a goddess, and documentation of the play on the goddess, provide you with a rare entry into an unusual world, and a close look at Chapal Bhaduri’s life and work.