Chapal Rani: The man who became one of India’s greatest stage queens

Chapal Bhaduri was Bengal’s biggest stage queen - until women arrived and the spotlight moved on.

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Foremost among them was Chapal Bhaduri - better known as Chapal Rani - the reigning "queen" of jatra, a travelling theatre tradition that once drew vast, fervent crowds.

Male actors playing female roles were a familiar trope across global theatre, from Europe to Japan and China.

In Bengal, the form flourished in jatra - a rural, open-air spectacle of music, myth and melodrama that often rivalled cinema in reach, though not in rewards. Rooted in epic and devotional storytelling, it played out on all-sided stages, driven by heightened voice, gesture and costume.

In a new book, Chapal Rani: The Last Queen of Bengal, writer Sandip Roy traces Bhaduri's journey from stardom to obscurity - and, in doing so, captures a vanishing world where gender itself was an act.