One of the bona fide theatrical hits of 2023 was a play titled “Public Obscenities” by director-turned-playwright Shayok Misha Chowdhury. It opened at Soho Rep in Manhattan in January of 2023 to the kind of glowing reviews and audience responses a playwright can only dream of. The same production was remounted that fall at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington D.C., and as of this writing, it is currently running at Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn.

A New York Times Critic’s Pick from its first outing, the play continues to draw raves in its latest iteration. Helen Shaw of The New Yorker calls it a triumph. A few days after this interview, Misha won an Obie for his direction of the play, this after the play’s cast received a 2023 Drama Desk Award for best ensemble.

What makes the success of “Public Obscenities” so remarkable is that that there’s nothing about the play that screams “Guaranteed Surefire Hit!” For one thing, with its relatively large cast of seven and with its multimedia elements, it’s not cheap to produce. Then also it is bilingual, partly in English, partly in the playwright’s native Bangla. Granted, Bangla is the sixth most spoken native language in the world (thank you, Wikipedia), but it is not a language familiar to most Americans. Plus, though sections of the play in which Bangla is spoken are supertitled, there are other scenes without any translations at all.

Also, the play is very queer. It follows an Indian-American PhD candidate as he returns with his Black American boyfriend to a family home in Kolkata, India. There he plans to interview sexual minorities for his dissertation. The play is therefore very frank about sexuality and features two non-gender-conforming characters.

And it’s three hours long.

But despite these details — or maybe exactly because of them — the play is an unqualified hit.

Here Misha details how he hewed to his vision for the play no matter its evolving demands and hints at a road map for struggling theaters and the artists who wish to create work for their stages.

https://www.shayokmishachowdhury.com/

https://www.tfana.org/current-season/public-obscenities/overview

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