Ketaki Dutta with Soumitra Chatterjee in the film Patalghar

Even when she was just a sprightly six-year-old prancing about at home with her peers, Girish Ghosh, the theatre stalwart, felt she was destined for the stage. That is where Ketaki Dutta belonged till the very end, choosing the stigma and the struggle attached to an actress, and ruling Bengali commercial theatre in its heydays.

Though there isn?t much documentation on her, freelance cinematographer-director Ranu Ghosh has captured the long-neglected actress in a documentary. Curtain Call studies Dutta against the backdrop of commercial theatre. ?Ketakidi was the missing link between the glorious era of commercial theatre and our times,? explains Ghosh, who has consciously steered clear of reconstructing Dutta?s life through photographs and archived footage as she felt that would divert the focus from her purpose. So, Ghosh started out by filming Mukti, the Rangakarmee production where Dutta played the lead, and also catching the actress backstage.

?I wanted to explore the personal space of an actress. A woman?s struggle at home and outside, and the things they don?t usually talk about, on-stage or backstage. The problem I faced while shooting a personality is that one needs a lot of time to get close to the person. By the time Ketakidi wanted to talk, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer and hospitalised,? says Ghosh, who had to depend solely on the two interviews her subject gave around a fortnight before her death in July 2003.

But Dutta did open up in her two longish chats before the camera ? touching upon childhood days, her actress mother, the stigma attached to actresses in those days and the stage that beckoned her till the end.

Apart from Noti Binodini and Antony Kabiyal, Barbadhu established Dutta as the most powerful actress of her times, but it also wreaked havoc on her personal life. ?I was ostracised from theatre for playing a prostitute in Barbadhu and I couldn?t act for the next seven-eight years. Does anyone know the agony I went through?? asks Dutta, in one of the interviews, before recreating the famous character through her reminiscences.

Ghosh juxtaposes Dutta alongside one of her inspirations, Binodini Dasi, in Curtain Call. For she feels both the lives are similar at one level ? struggling against odds to establish themselves as actresses. So, she has interspersed Dutta?s interviews with Binodini?s voice from her autobiography, Amar Katha. ?Ketakidi often mentioned that whenever she received adulation on stage she was reminded of Binodini, who has been a source of inspiration for several actresses of Bengal,? adds Ghosh.

Curtain Call was screened at Max Mueller Bhavan last Friday.