“As a writer, Chowdhury interweaves humor, allusion, gravity, and extended metaphor as if each quality were a musical line, making an integrated symphonic whole…As a director, his greatest talent is how he uses his spectacular cast. Each virtuoso is gorgeously…
“Exquisitely crafted…meticulously rendered middle-class Bengali home…dense and detailed…rich and strange. The play’s great poignancy lies in its restraint. The whole ensemble is marvelous.” – Sara Holdren Read more from New York Magazine here.
“Public Obscenities is the most Bengali play…heartwarming, unusual, and astounding.” – Snigdha Sur Read more from The Juggernaut here.
“New York Times Critic’s Pick! A confident playwright…successfully writing a bilingual play…who with Public Obscenities, may have found himself on the brink of greatness…uniformly excellent cast…leaves the audience longing for even more.” – Juan A. Ramírez Read more from The New…
“We’re lucky that Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s intricate bilingual drama is returning in 2024 for an encore run, at Theatre for a New Audience.” Read more from The New Yorker here.
“After an acclaimed run at Soho Rep last spring, Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s play is back for a longer stint in Brooklyn. Told in English and Bangla, with supertitles about the stage, the play depicts a Bengali American Ph.D. student and…
10 Arts and Culture Favorites from 2023 “It’s rare that I can use a year-end list to endorse a theater show that people still have a chance to see. Shayok Misha’s revelatory and affectionate bilingual play Public Obscenities premiered at SoHo Rep…
Waiting for Godot “In Arin Arbus’s vigorous, earthy production…Paul Sparks and Michael Shannon brought the play’s humor and its humanity to the fore in a pair of gutsy and charmingly distinctive performances.” Prometheus Firebringer “(Writer and Director Annie Dorsen) made…
“Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” directed by Arin Arbus—who’s always up to something you want to see—is often set aside as an example of onstage philosophizing, all cerebral existentialism, with none of the comforts of conventional plot. But in the…
“MICHAEL SHANNON AND PAUL SPARKS…THE POWERHOUSE DUO… ARE WELL WORTH WAITING FOR GODOT…Shannon and Sparks blend their idiosyncratic styles so ingeniously with the text, they give it uncommon clarity. Arbus and her actors achieve a dynamic and even heartfelt production…