Portrait of an artist as professor

P. Senrayaperumal was forced to drop out of school to play his part in the caste-bound genre of Raja Rani Attam theatre. He and his brothers spent their childhood playing female roles — enduring slurs, sexual harassment, and bearing the burden of tradition. At age 23, he made a desperate gamble to reclaim education all by himself, even while dancing through nights to survive. He did earn the education that he was systemically denied. He got a PhD on the folk tradition he had been practising, all the while holding on to the promise of higher education in the country. A promise that, in his case, was tragically short-lived.

The filmmaker is grateful to P. Sainath and Pratishtha Pandya for their support in making of this documentary.