Pritham Chakravarthy: Performing Aravanis’ Life Stories

Aravanis (transsexuals or transgenders) experience a moment called nirvanam (transcendence), when they are surgically transformed from woman-in-a-man’s-body to woman. Pritham Chakravarthy, an assistant professor of dramaturgy and film history at the Ramanaidu Film Institute in Hyderabad, presents the life of an aravani, culminating in this moment, in her 2001 one-woman play Nirvanam (Trancendence). This article is an exploration of that play and its performance and reception both within the aravani community itself and for broader audiences. It is based on extensive interviews with Chakravarthy herself as well as film Our Family, and my personal experiences as an audience member at some of Chakravarthy’s applied theatre performances. She developed Nirvanam at the request of the aravani community, and many of them have been actively involved through interviews and critiques of performances. Through her sharing of life stories in performance, Chakravarthy emphasizes women’s agency, choice, and power in an Indian context to inspire hope and recognition instead of despair, she is able to transform narratives that may be both traumatic and quotidian into stories to which caste-privileged, educated, middle-class intellectuals can relate. Her work grapples with the politics of representation and issues of the body as she attempts to expand both her own and her audiences’ points of understanding and experience as well as to benefit in some way the communities she is representing.