Thread by @Paperclip_In

He or She? An intriguing thread about female impersonators who once mesmerized the theater world of Bombay: At the beginning of the mid-19th century, Bombay’s theater culture was experiencing a sort of boom, thanks to Parsi, Gujarati, and Marathi groups (1/n)

The Stage was particularly popular among middle class Parsi students, who besides studying at Elphinstone college, were making headways in to the stages of Bombay’s famous Gaiety and Novelty theaters (2/n)

Though many of Bombay’s theaters were owned by Parsis, they were open to all. The Parsi theater’s use of different languages for production and medium created a unique stage for cultural synergy that wasn't restricted by region or linguistics (3/n)

There was however a disparity on stage, one of gender. A woman performing in public was considered a social taboo (4/n)

This not only led to a section of women being stigmatized for dancing and singing but also created a space for male actors to impersonate female characters (5/n)

One of the pioneers of this unique trade was D. N. Parekh, who played Portia in the Merchant of Venice, and Mrs. Smart in G. O. Trevelyan's The Dawk Bungalow (6/n)

Another actor Framji Joshi played the lead in a Gujarati version of Bulwer-Lytton's The Lady of Lyons in 1868. Joshi’s performance as the female character was so efficient, he was given lucrative offers by other theater companies (7/n)

The concept became so popular with the audiences, soon theater companies were willing to pay a premium for young men of pleasing figures with superlative voices, who were willing to play female roles (8/n)

Many actors were all-rounders like Khurshed Baliwala who played a female role in Rustam and Sohrab and then went on to play lead male roles in other plays (9/n)

These female impersonators performed important roles on the stage, replete with female mannerisms, body language and a sweet voice (10/n)

A popular impersonator Naslu Sarkari was famous for his ‘cuckoo’ voice or kokil kanth, as he played the Emerald Fairy to Kavas Khatau's Prince Gulfam in the Indar Sabha (11/n)

Some of the roles got so famous that people started attaching them to the actors who played them. Nasharvanji Framji became famous as Naslu "Tahmina" for his performance as Sohrab's mother in Rustam and Sohrab (12/n)

Naslu's younger brother, Pestanji Framji, was called Pesu "Avan," after the heroine in a Gujarati version of Shakespeare's Pericles (13/n)

Female impersonation continued well into the 20th century. Apart from mesmerizing theater audiences, it inadvertently made the idea of a female performing on a public platform acceptable (14/n)

Female audiences gradually increased and so did their participation backstage as actors (15/n)

The documented lives of famous female impersonators like Jaishankar Sundari and Bal Gandharva give a rare glimpse of this transformation from man to woman and how their feminine attires and mannerisms captivated the audiences back in the day (16/n)

Source: Making Women Visible: Gender and Race Cross-Dressing in the Parsi Theatre by Kathryn Hansen, semanticscholar.org, IWMBuzz.com, Upperstall.com, cinemaazi.com