Clad in a black T-shirt and leggings, a fashionable young student perches atop a wooden stool, trying to emote once more a challenging scene from a theatrical tradition whose history stretches back 1500 years. It’s a famed episode from Koodiyattam, where the actor, as Ravana during a flashback, alternates between the roles of Shiva and Parvati. While the narrator is indeed the Lankan king of the Ramayana, here he has to move and freeze into the poses of both the Lord of Kailasa and his consort. A sequence of evolutions from the masculine profile to the feminine to the masculine once again.