He plays she. She plays heA Male Raja Rani Attam Performer Takes On Female Characters, While A Female Kattaikuttu Artist Steps Into Male Roles, Challenging Notions Of Gender In Folk ArtsAsha.Prakash@timesofindia.com‘Drunks harass me during shows’It’s 9pm and P Senrayaperumal is carefully applying his lipstick, kajal and jewellery. He isn’t getting ready for a play, but for a night’s performance of raja rani attam. The characters keep changing, but one thing has remained the same for 18 years — Senrayaperumal’s role, always that of a woman.Raja rani attam, a little-known musical folk-art form that originates in Madurai and other southern districts of Tamil Nadu, has always had men playing women’s roles. The reason, says the 43-year-old, is that the shows start at 10pm and can go on till 9am. “Women hesitate to participate in all-nighter shows.”It isn’t easy for a man either, he says. “Drunk men grab at my chest or buttocks and speak filth. I used to get hurt and hated this art form. But it’s my only livelihood. I can’t do anything else as I am a dalit artist. Some villagers supported me and gave good responses, otherwise I would have lost my self-respect,” he says.Senrayaperumal, a native of Soolapuram village near Usilampatti in Madurai, is a third-generation performer. “My grandfather was an urumi (drum) artist,” he says. “My father played female roles in raja rani attam for 35 years. I started when I was 15.” Unlike most art forms, raja rani attam doesn’t have a defined set of stories or epics which are set to choreography. “We sing historical songs, folk songs, comedy; anything which appeals to the audience, like in therukoothu.”Raja rani attam, he says, is an umbrella term for different performances such as those featuring a raja and rani (king and queen), kuravan and kurathi (tribal characters from folklore), besides Peyattam (an Andhra style theyyam). Songs about revered figures in Tamil folklore and literature such as Nalla Thangal, and modern-day dalit leaders such as Thol Thirumavalavan and K Krishnaswami also find a place in the stories. The women characters which Senrayaperumal plays such as that of the kurathi and Nalla Thangal, besides goddesses such as Amman and Mariamman are strong leads, he says, and not secondary characters.“There is no formal instruction of the art form. Younger artists learn from seniors,” he says. Most artists, he adds, come from the Arunthathiyar community which is a scheduled caste.There isn’t much scope for a regular income from the art form, though. “We have no other livelihood and the show is seasonal. During the season, we get many programmes, and `2,000 per head, per show. In a month, we get 10 shows. Off season, we perform only during funerals, where we sing oppari, where we get only `200 a person.”Nowadays people prefer to watch art forms where women play female characters, he says. Senrayaperumal made great efforts to get a BA in English, going on to complete an MPhil and a PhD. “My research was on ‘Raja rani dance and its social status’.” After a stint as an assistant professor in a university in the city, he is now back to performing raja rani attam owing to certain legal tussles.‘I won’t wear fair-skin makeup’Thilagavathi Palani is someone who realised that women don’t take part in all-night folk-art performances but decided to do so anyway, becoming among the first women in the state to play men’s roles. “I’ve played Duryodhana, Shakuni, Bhima, Balarama, Krishna and many other male characters, besides female characters,” says the 36-year-old.It all began when P Rajagopal, founder of the Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam in Kancheepuram, started an initiative for the art form to be taught for free in villages. “In my village Kalavai Koot Road in Ranipet, my uncle Munuswamy was the teacher. I was the only girl among 20 boys,” says Thilagavathi.Around the same time, Rajagopal opened a residency programme at their gurukulam with wife Hanne Bruin.“I had no idea I would be the first woman to be a kattaikuttu artist,” she says. “I just enjoyed learning it. Also, my family was poor, and I had four younger sisters. It made sense for me to join a residency programme where I would be taken care of.”Thilagavathi studied kattaikkuttu for eight years at the centre and later did an assistant apprenticeship programme for two more years with her guru, finishing Class X through open schooling in the meantime.Soon after, she started performing kattaikkuttu which is held in temples, throughout the summer. “Only stories from the Mahabharata are told in the art form, in episodes, and we get 200 shows a year.”At the same time, the challenges have been many. The biggest, she says, has been her gender. “Family members would tell my parents that girls shouldn’t be going on stage, and that people would look at me in a ‘bad way’. But ever since I started earning, the same relatives started viewing me as a star. Thankfully my parents have been supportive.”However, the fact that she is 36 and unmarried is still a point of contention among relatives, she says.Her male colleagues didn’t always like her taking on a leadership role, she says. “That’s why I started my own company, Sree Thilagam, which has 18 students today, a mix of girls and boys.” There are also places where she is not accepted because of her caste, she says. “Kattaikuttu is a ritualistic practice and in some temples, they say only dominant caste artists should play certain scenes.” Thilagavathi is someone who insists that she retains her dark skin tone in the performances, and often doesn’t change it to the mandatory pale shade usually used.Alongside, Thilagavathi started working with NGO Pudiyador in Chennai, as part of which she would travel around, teaching kattaikuttu to children. “I created my own curriculum and help them develop self-confidence while learning the art.”She joined classical dancer Sangeeta Isvaran’s organisation Katradi (wind dancers trust). “We choreographed shows that combined bharatanatyam and kattaikuttu to address different issues such as child labour, child marriage, trafficking and domestic violence.”Thilagavathi has now come up with a kattaikkuttu performance of her own, the story of queen Alli from the Mahabharata, shortened to a 45-minute show, ‘Allithilagam’. “Most stories in the epic are male-oriented. Alli is powerful and has an army of her own. Alli’s story has similarities to my struggles.”
