Public Obscenities

D I G I TA L P R O G R A M A N D 360° VIEWFINDER SERIES FACTS AND PERSPECTIVES O N T H E P L AY, P L AY W R I G H T, A N D P R O D U C T I O N

W W W.T FA N A.O R G

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE Polonsky Shakespeare Center Jeffrey Horowitz Robert E. Buckholz Dorothy Ryan FOUNDING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR BOARD CHAIR MANAGING DIRECTOR and WOOLLY MAMMOTH THEATRE COMPANY Maria Manuela Goyanes Kimberly E. Douglas ARTISTIC DIRECTOR MANAGING DIRECTOR Present Soho Rep and the NAATCO National Partnership Project’s production of

PUBLIC OBSCENITIES

written and directed by SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY On the Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage Featuring TASHNUVA ANAN, ABRAR HAQUE, GOLAM SARWAR HARUN, GARGI MUKHERJEE, NAFIS, JAKEEM DANTE POWELL, DEBASHIS ROY CHOWDHURY Costume Designer Sound Designer Scenic Designer Lighting Designer ENVER CHAKARTASH TEI BLOW PEIYI WONG BARBARA SAMUELS Cultural Dramaturg Video/Projection Designer Properties Designer Dramaturg SUKANYA CHAKRABARTI PATRICIA MARJORIE SARAH LUNNIE JOHNNY MORENO Hair and Wigs Voice Director Production Stage Manager Intimacy Director TOMMY KURZMAN ANDREW WADE TENLEY PITONZO TENIECE DIVYA JOHNSON Casting Press Representative General Manager STEPHANIE YANKWITT, CSA BLAKE ZIDELL & ASSOCIATES JEREMY BLUNT tbd casting co.

First preview January 17, 2024 Opening night January 24, 2024

2023-2024 Season Sponsors.

Principal support for Theatre for a New Audience’s season and programs is provided by the Bay and Paul Foundations, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Jerome L. Greene Foundation Fund in the New York Community Trust, The SHS Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, and The Thompson Family Foundation.

Major season support is provided by The Arnow Family Fund, The Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation, Sally Brody, Robert E. Buckholz and Lizanne Fontaine, Constance Christensen, The Hearst Corporation, Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia, Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP, Latham & Watkins LLP, The George Link Jr. Foundation, Audrey Heffernan Meyer and Danny Meyer, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Stockel Family Foundation, Anne and William Tatlock, Kimbrough Towles and George Loening, Kathleen Walsh and Gene Bernstein, and The White Cedar Fund.

Theatre for a New Audience’s season and programs are also made possible, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities; Shakespeare in American Communities, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Open captioning is provided, in part, by a grant from NYSCA/TDF TAP Plus.

PUBLIC OBSCENITIES was originally commissioned and produced by Soho Rep., New York, NY Sarah Benson, Cynthia Flowers, Meropi Peponides, Directors and National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO), New York, NY Mia Katigbak, Founder and Actor Manager Peter Kim, Creative Producer 2

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CAST

(in alphabetical order) Shou........................................................................................................................................................ TASHNUVA ANAN Choton.......................................................................................................................................................... ABRAR HAQUE Jitesh........................................................................................................................................... GOLAM SARWAR HARUN Pishimoni............................................................................................................................................. GARGI MUKHERJEE Sebanti.......................................................................................................................................................................... NAFIS Raheem....................................................................................................................................... JAKEEM DANTE POWELL Pishe.................................................................................................................................. DEBASHIS ROY CHOWDHURY With gratitude to Bhadra Chaudhuri and Partha Chowdhury.

Choton U/S........................................................................................................................................... SHREYO BANERJEE Pishe/Jitesh U/S............................................................................................................................... RAJIB BHATTACHARYA Raheem U/S........................................................................................................... JONATHAN NATHANIEL DINGLE-EL Shou/Sebanti U/S................................................................................................................................................ KOMOLIKA Pishimoni U/S...................................................................................................................................................... MITA PAUL Stage Manager......................................................................................................................................... TENLEY PITONZO Assistant Stage Manager..................................................................................................................... ANNIE CHOUDHURY Assistant Stage Manager.................................................................................................................. PAULINA "PAU" TOBAR

SETTING

A two-story house in South Kolkata.

THERE WILL BE ONE 15-MINUTE INTERMISSION.

This Theatre operates under an agreement between the League of Resident Theatres and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

The actors and stage managers employed in this production are members of Actors’ Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States.

The scenic, costume, lighting and sound designers in LORT Theatres are represented by United Scenic Artists, Local USA-829 of the IATSE.

The participation of Shayok Misha Chowdhury's Public Obscenities for performances January 17-21 in the 2024 Under the Radar Festival is made possible by Theatre for a New Audience in association with Under the Radar; Mark Russell, Festival Director & ArKtype, Festival Producer. More information at utrfest.org

PUBLIC OBSCENITIES 3

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5

Origins: Soho Rep and Public Obscenities

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A Note from the Playwright and Director

by Shayok Misha Chowdhury

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Dialogues: The Home Must Fall

by Durba Mitra

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Interview: "Between Two Worlds" Alisa Solomon in conversation with Shayok Misha Chowdhury

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Bios: Cast and Creative Team

About Theatre For a New Audience 27

Leadership

28

Mission and Programs

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Major Supporters

Notes Front Cover: Design by Paul Davis Studio / Mo Hinojosa This Viewfinder will be periodically updated with additional information. Last updated January 26, 2024.

Credits Public Obscenities 360° | Edited by Nadiya L. Atkinson Resident Dramaturg: Jonathan Kalb | Council of Scholars Chair: Tanya Pollard | Designed by: Milton Glaser, Inc. Publisher: Theatre for a New Audience, Jeffrey Horowitz, Founding Artistic Director Public Obscenities 360° Copyright 2024 by Theatre for a New Audience. All rights reserved.

With the exception of classroom use by teachers and individual personal use, no part of this Viewfinder may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Some materials herein are written especially for our guide. Others are reprinted with permission of their authors or publishers.

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ORIGINS SOHO REP and PUBLIC OBSCENITIES

Jakeem Dante Powell (Raheem) and Abrar Haque (Choton) in PUBLIC OBSCENITIES at Soho Rep. Photo by Julieta Cervantes, courtesy of Soho Rep.

J

ust a few of the plays that have received their premiere at Soho Rep’s 65-seat downtown venue and have gone onto future productions include: Aleshea Harris’s Is God Is, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon, Hansol Jung’s Wolf Play and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview, which was recognized with the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and transferred to Berkeley Repertory Theater and Theatre for a New Audience before receiving new productions across the globe including at Woolly Mammoth and London’s Young Vic. In 2020/21, Soho Rep launched Project Number One, which we initially conceived of as a job creation program in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and record unemployment in our field. Eight artists joined our staff for the year, receiving health insurance and a full-time salary.

eight sold out weeks, was recognized with a special “Ensemble Award” from the Drama Desk Awards, and was named one of the Best Productions of 2023

by The New Yorker and the Hollywood Reporter.

In addition to Public Obscenities, Soho Rep’s 2023/24 Season includes the world premieres of Snatch Adams & Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month, which was named one of Vulture/ New York Mag’s Best Productions of 2023, and The Fires, written and directed by Raja Feather Kelly. Please visit sohorep.org to purchase tickets to our upcoming productions and to learn more about the company’s nearly 50-year history as a vital civic institution.

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Shayok Misha Chowdhury was a member of the initial Project Number One cohort and began writing Public Obscenities during his time as a Project Number One Artist on Staff. We subsequently offered Misha a finishing commission and, along with the National Asian American Theater Company’s National Partnership Project, gave the play its World Premiere in February 2023. Public Obscenities ran for PUBLIC OBSCENITIES 5

A NOTE FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT AND DIRECTOR

BY SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY From "Inquiries on Realism," originally published in Playwrights Horizons' Almanac.

M

y mother never wears make-up. Rarely at a wedding she’ll put on a little lipstick, and folks will gasp, astonished, “বু​ুলবু​ুল দি� তো�োমা​াকে� তো�ো চে�না​া ই যা​াচ্ছে� না​া”: we hardly recognize you! My parents are academics. That’s kind of their gender, honestly: academic. In our home, the ethos was always: why would you spend your precious time talking about “শা​াড়ি� গয়না​া”—sarees, jewelry—when you could instead be discussing books, movies, the life of the mind?

I grew up watching Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, filmmakers who were “pushing against the like… lowbrow, song-and-dancey vibes of mainstream Bollywood cinema.” That’s how Choton, the main character in Public Obscenities, describes Bengali neorealism. In contrast to pop, campy Bollywood, these Bengali auteurs of the 50s were out to capture an unadorned India. No make-up.

No choreographed musical sequences. This was a Marxist cinema, emerging just after Independence: real people, real problems. Ray’s Pather Panchali is my favorite. It doesn’t feel like a film. It feels like the rhythms of real life.

Bengali theater, on the other hand, especially here in the diaspora, was always too melodramatic for me. Why are they talking like that? That’s not how people talk. I feel that way when I watch a lot of theater, tbh. Some folks who saw Public Obscenities at Soho Rep described it as theater vérité.

I kind of like that. I wanted to tell a story about my culture with granular, documentary-like precision. By my culture I mean a class of Bengali intelligentsia and their emigrant children. It’s a culture that values education above all else.

In the play, Shou, a genderqueer character, tells Choton, “My mother always says to me, ‘Why you are putting such gaudy dress? Instead of calling attention to yourself, why don’t you focus on your studies?’”

Abrar Haque (Choton) in PUBLIC OBSCENITIES at Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Photo by Hollis King.

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In seventh grade, I started parting my hair in the middle and wearing my shirt untucked to school. It felt risqué somehow to look in the mirror and make these small, deliberate choices. To consider myself aesthetically. My academic, gently socialist parents sometimes wondered aloud whether school uniforms weren’t more conducive to learning. I am deeply grateful for the values they instilled in me. And sometimes, in the bathroom mirror, I underline my eyes with kajol like an old-school Bollywood heroine.

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DIALOGUES THE HOME MUST FALL

BY DURBA MITRA

Debashis Roy Chowdhury (Pishe) and Jakeem Dante Powell (Raheem) in PUBLIC OBSCENITIES at Polonsky Shakespeare Center.

Photo by Hollis King.

Bollam “house” kothhay? Eta toh ekta mausoleum.

I said what “house”? This is a mausoleum.

-Pishe, in Public Obscenities

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n Kolkata, colonial statues don’t fall, they just get moved quietly away from view. Just outside the bustling city, in the mofussil suburban town of Barrackpore, is an old governor general’s house, once a summer house for British officials, later populated with statues of men from India’s colonial past. It is no longer a home to anyone today, just a living tomb of monuments in memorial to a not-so-distant past. It is like many old spaces in Kolkata that look to be perpetually in a nostalgic sepia tone, yellowed, framed by dilapidated walls and peeling paint, in an environment that is hot and slow moving.

Feminist historian Durba Ghosh tells us that monuments memorializing triumphant colonial pasts were actually a desperate last bid for power, as anti-colonial resistance reached new heights. As Ghosh describes, the statues

were erected late into the time of British colonialism, in the first decades of the twentieth century, to create a semblance of power and stability for the British in its prized colony in a time of uncertainty and unrest.

Barrackpore was a cantonment town that housed the military barracks of the British colonial state. These barracks were the subject of wide-ranging colonial laws that sought to regulate queer and non-normative sexual relationships among colonial soldiers and colonized peoples. These laws banned everything from “sodomy” in the now notorious section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, to regulations on public solicitation, begging, and lewd behavior. The new laws also sanctioned state-regulated prostitution through a massive colonial medical and policing apparatus seeking to control “contagious diseases” like syphilis through invasive forced medical examinations of girls and women who were classified as “prostitutes.” The abandoned relic in this barracks town, a house now uninhabited, is a fitting PUBLIC OBSCENITIES 7

THE HOME MUST FALL

DURBA MITRA

home to more than a dozen statues of British men that were a tribute to a once glorious colonial past. Instead of being destroyed, the statues were quietly moved to the suburbs away from view in the decades after the end of colonialism. Today the luscious green life of the Bengal Delta overtakes these statues, growing in the crevices.

Not a home, but a mausoleum.

of Indian law: section numbers 292, 294, 268, 372, 377 and many, many more. These colonial laws were inherited by India upon independence and today are used to surveil, harass, blackmail, and violate women and sexual minorities, including people who identify as gay, lesbian, queer, trans, the trans femme identities of kothi, hijra, and beyond.

Mama bollen naki “distribution of pornographic material” aare bhai ka ke distribution, shob to nijer jonnyei tulechhilam!

Mr. Cop was like, “distribution of pornographic material.” Distributing to who sir? I got them for myself!

-Shou

Freedom of expression, unlike in the US, is not a protected constitutional right in India. The notorious sections 292, 293, and 294 define the violation of “obscenity” under Indian law and have historically been used to regulate the speech and behavior of minoritized people, including sexual minorities, artists, low-caste, Dalit, and OBC communities, and Muslims. Obscenity, legally, is defined as any work or act that depicts sexual conduct in an offensive way. When the character Shou talks about the police trying to charge someone with the distribution of pornography, they are referring to the everyday reality of policing under section 292, which prohibits the “sale of obscene books, etc.” Section 294,

Statues are not the only relics that shape everyday living in Calcutta and across the postcolonial world.

Monumental structures that haunt the lives of women, queer, and trans peoples come in the form of numbers based in the long-standing Indian Penal Code, first enacted in 1861. So many numbers dot the landscape

NaFis (Sebanti) and Tashnuva Anan (Shou) in PUBLIC OBSCENITIES at Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Photo by Hollis King.

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DURBA MITRA

THE HOME MUST FALL

Participants and posters during Bhubaneswar Pride Parade, 1 September 2018. Photo by Sailesh Patnaik

the object of Choton’s research project, regulates any “obscene act in any public place” or “any obscene song, ballad or words, in or near any public place.”

Perhaps most famous among these legal monuments is section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, commonly known as the anti-sodomy or anti-homosexuality law, a section that was deemed unconstitutional by the Indian Supreme Court in 2018 after decades of legal and political advocacy. Section 377 was not simply about the prosecution of people engaging in same-sex acts. Rather, the law created new ways for the state to intervene in everyday life and have claim over the bodies of nonnormative people. It created new forms of knowledge, and over more than a century, served as a tool of intimidation by the police. And while social and political movements have created uproar and challenges to 377 that led to the successful repeal of parts of the code related to same-sex relationships, the question of sexuality and sexual expression in public remains. In the Supreme Court judgement, members of the LGBT community are

only able to express affection in ways that are acceptable, “so long as it does not amount to indecency.”

Thak baba, aami oto kichhu bujhina, queer feer.

Listen I don’t know much about all this “queer” business.

-Sebanti In the face of social exclusion, policing, and everyday violence against the people who variously identify as queer, gay, trans, hijra, and kothi, what does solidarity look like? Throughout Public Obscenities, it is clear that we live in perpetual translation, often unsuccessfully, across ideas of desire and racialized sexuality, hierarchies of caste and class, and, to use the famous language of Nobel Prize-winning Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, the home and the world.

The play points to the discomforting difference between the elite first world queer-identifying Choton and Raheem and the objectified Third World “research subjects” Shou and Sebanti who refuse the language and politics of “queer.” The words that the US-born PUBLIC OBSCENITIES 9

THE HOME MUST FALL researcher uses for his research subject are wholly insufficient and objectify the extraordinary lives lived by people. As trans studies scholar Ani Dutta shows, people in Bengal create deeply local vernacular lexicons for sexual identity and politics in the face of inadequate globalizing terms like queer and trans. The multiplicity of language animates the many people and sexual identities who live in the interstices of heterosexual households. Only some get to access that privileged space of the middle-class Kolkata household, as Choton and Raheem do when they arrive in Kolkata. What they learn of course is that there is no such thing as privacy, even inside the home, a privacy which Indian law mandates is the only appropriate place for gay sex. Public Obscenities gives us no easy answers for how to forge solidarity across class, caste, sexual identity, and geographies, but makes clear that English is wholly inadequate to understand queer life, whatever “queer” might mean.

DURBA MITRA Rather, the politics of subversion and survival come in the language and lives of the people who enact it every day. Trans studies scholar Sayan Bhattacharya argues that we must foreground improvisation and innovation in the way we see the lives of queer and trans communities in India. In a world of police violence, anti-trans social sentiment, and poverty, India’s diverse queer and trans communities create worlds that defy environments of policing and deprivation to create life in excess of an everyday saturated by routinized violence. The pleasures of life can be in food and dance, as Public Obscenities animates for us, in the sensuality of a sari blouse that is the envy of all women, and in the dark humor of a kothi person who mocks the queer desires that shape the carceral violence of the police officer. Shou, a trans femme identifying kothi, and Sebanti, a trans femme identifying hijra elder, care for one another; they live in a totally different kinship, one

Jakeem Dante Powell (Raheem) and Abrar Haque (Choton) in PUBLIC OBSCENITIES at Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Photo by Hollis King.

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DURBA MITRA

THE HOME MUST FALL that defies the norms of the heterosexual household.

This work of laughter and refusal offered in the unruly “research interview” is what feminist scholar Anjali Arondekar describes as a world that exceeds violence and subjugation through abundance, minoritized communities building archives for survival in excess of state and social violence.

Ekdom bari’r chhele’r moto.

Just like a member of our home.

-Pishimoni Kolkata is a city of relics. Its nostalgic homes are filled with dusty colonial-era glass cabinets that display tea sets and crystals in a domestic landscape desperate to project stability in the face of decline. The home offers the false promise of certainty in privacy, but in the end, nothing is secure. As the play unfolds, we learn that the home Tashnuva Anan (Shou) in PUBLIC OBSCENITIES at Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Photo by Hollis King.

has its own laws, its own transgressive public acts, and its own regulatory codes against the transgressions of language, food, and racial difference that the family finds obscene. Public Obscenities dwells in the disorienting silence, the punishing repetition, the unspoken social hierarchies, and the comic misunderstandings that define the intimate spaces of the household. The mundane nature of everyday life is stifling, judgmental, and profoundly anti-intellectual. Yet the home is also a deeply emotional place, familiar in its rituals and full of overbearing acts of care. These quiet observations of the paradox of home and family—where suffocating intrusions, the intimate reinforcement of servitude, and the endless work of social reproduction thrives alongside the fictions of domestic intimacy and comfort—make Public Obscenities the best kind of feminist work.

To understand the family is to know that home is simultaneously love and confinement, all at the same time. And, sometimes, to be free, the home must fall.

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DURBA MITRA is the Richard B. Wolf Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. She is the author of Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton University Press, 2020). Her forthcoming book, The Future That Was (under contract with Princeton University Press) is a history of Third World feminist research and writing against authoritarianism.

To learn more, see: Arondekar, Anjali. Abundance: Sexuality’s History. Duke University Press, 2023.

Bhattacharya, Sayan. “Unhoming the Home as Field: Notes Towards Difficult Friendships” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 5, no. 3 (2018): 76-83.

Dutta, Aniruddha. “Legible identities and legitimate citizens: The globalization of transgender and subjects of HIV-AIDS prevention in Eastern India” International Feminist Journal of Politics 15, no. 4 (2013): 494-514.

Ghosh, Durba. “Stabilizing History through Statues, Monuments, and Memorials in Curzon's India” The Historical Journal 66, no. 2 (2023): 348-369.

Mitra, Durba. Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought. Princeton University Press, 2020.

P U B L I C O B S C E N I T I E S 11

INTERVIEW “BETWEEN TWO WORLDS” ALISA SOLOMON IN CONVERSATION WITH SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY

Jakeem Dante Powell (Raheem) and Gargi Mukherjee (Pishimoni) in PUBLIC OBSCENITIES at Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Photo by Hollis King.

The following is an edited version of a conversation that took place on December 19, 2023, between Alisa Solomon (TFANA Council of Scholars) and Public Obscenities playwright and director Shayok Misha Chowdhury.

ALISA SOLOMON Let’s start by talking about the one

thing potential audience members might have heard about the play after its run at Soho Rep here in New York or at Woolly Mammoth in Washington, DC. Namely, that it is bilingual—presented in English and Bangla. I first want to allay any anxieties that non-Bangla-speaking people like me might have: there is nothing we need to know that is not translated through speech or in supertitles. And, importantly, the dual nature of the play’s dialogue is not only true to its setting in a Bengali home in Kolkata, India, but it also gives a linguistic dimension to the play’s thematic questions about how we make meaning: what we perceive, what we fail to see, what we comprehend, what we misinterpret, what we don’t have words to express.

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY For me, what animates 12

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the play is the experience of living in two languages and between worlds. But there’s a particular aspect of that experience I’m exploring. Growing up bilingual, it felt like I was always trying to prove my nativeness in whatever language I was speaking. To me, language was a kind of currency. I was always in search of precision and accuracy. When I migrated to the States [as a toddler], being able to capture an authentic American accent was a kind of passport my parents didn't have. I relished the ability to chameleon through language, into a new kind of belonging in a place. That was also about retaining a native-esque fluency in my mother tongue, which I think is a relatively rare experience for folks of my generation, at least in the Bengali American community I grew up with.

That sense of really being able to pass as native back in the home country was something I worked hard at.

That effort I put into retaining my mother tongue is a large part of what I was writing toward in Choton, the main character in Public Obscenities. What does it mean to always be working to prove you are native to a place? If that labor is

“BETWEEN TWO WORLDS” an engine constantly churning inside you, are you ever really native to a place? How does that result in a romanticizing of the home country? Those are the kinds of questions that I was really interested in picking at in the play.

ALISA SOLOMON Your use just now of the term

‘mother tongue’ leaps out at me. Because the space of the play is framed as—critiqued as—patriarchal. The looming figure is the dead grandfather, and you're interested in gender in this play.

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY Choton reflects, in the second scene of the play, that he always calls the house to which he returns in India—the house the play takes place in—his grandfather's house. He never calls it his grandmother's or his aunt's house, who are, in fact, the two living family members in that house. The idealization of this grandfather figure, after death, is such a large part of what is bubbling in the groundwater of the play. I'm also trying to untangle how this class of Bengali intelligentsia, who were kind of like translators for the British colonists, became so deeply invested in education, as the ticket to a kind of life that afforded them mobility and access. And so much of that was about universities, institutions that were founded during the British colonial period and that were in and of themselves patriarchal.

My own family experience is a little bit in contradistinction to how patriarchal the family in the play is. My mother has a PhD and is a professor of physics.

She is one of five sisters and has one brother, and all those women are highly educated. But their mother never went to school. The distance between my mother and her mother is so much larger, in terms of life experience, than the distance between my mother and her father. My mother got to assimilate into a patriarchal universe. A large part of what the play is about is this inheritance of a colonial, patriarchal legacy of education.

ALISA SOLOMON That makes me think of a line

Choton has when he says, “I could be gay as long as I was getting a PhD in gay”: his sexual orientation could be accepted if made legible and serious by the academy.

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY A hundred percent.

ALISA SOLOMON What you said about the Bengali

intelligentsia also relates to a feeling I have about

ALISA SOLOMON Public Obscenities. In mood and form, it reminds me of Chekhov: a waning class going about the details of their lives while the world shifts beneath them, and the drama is in the cracks and small gestures. This isn’t a play with a big explosion of conflict and resolution or with a tiedup take-away. It’s quiet. The pace is languorous.

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY There is an intense

naturalism that I have always found radical in Chekhov's work that has been formative for me as a writer. Feudal, colonial structures still shape life for middle and upper middle-class Bengalis in Kolkata, and the conflict between those ways of living and a desire to be modern, shows up in the most mundane of interactions. That’s a kind of drama that usually attracts me as an audience member. I've always been drawn to the kind of texture on stage that feels like it isn't storytelling I can get ahead of, but is as complicated and messy and opaque and tangled as the rhythms of real life.

ALISA SOLOMON That makes me think, too, of

Annie Baker's work, and, in another way, of Beckett.

As I’m sure you know, the TFANA production that Public Obscenities is following is Waiting for Godot, famously—and erroneously—described as a play in which nothing really happens. How might you see your play in conversation with Godot? Is there any logic in the sequence for you?

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY I do think there is a tradition, that I hope I'm working in, that emanates out of those playwrights you mentioned, even though it feels deeply humbling to speak about my work in the same breath as Chekhov or Annie Baker or Beckett. That my show is coming on the heels of Godot at TFANA is really interesting. The plays couldn't be more different, but there is a way in which Beckett is engaging with that same sort of texture and rhythm of life. While he is playing with and constructing language more abstractly, versus the kind of hyperrealism I’m exploring in this play, both ask audiences to listen deeply.

I'll also mention that I was reading a lot of Amy Herzog and Richard Nelson while I was writing Public Obscenities. I'm very attracted to playwrights whose work gets described by saying that “nothing happened.” There's a tradition of offering up to an audience the patience of real time and allowing the P U B L I C O B S C E N I T I E S 13

“BETWEEN TWO WORLDS” complicated things to bubble up from within that music. That what I'm hoping to invite audiences into in Public Obscenities.

ALISA SOLOMON I want to pick up on something

you said about how much can be expressed in mundane interactions. In your play, there is so much drama in these subtle moments—not a fireworks kind of drama, but conflict and contradiction and revelation contained in small gestures or comments. I'm thinking about the patriarchal world you were describing and a moment early in the play when Choton tells his boyfriend, Raheem, that he refuses to wear a poite—a sacred thread that signifies status—because he doesn’t want to perpetuate what he calls “the cult of Brahminical patriarchy.” And yet we see him unselfconsciously behave in ways that take that world for granted. Raheem, as an outsider, does see these things and helps make them visible.

ALISA SOLOMON world perhaps more clearly than even Choton can.

We begin the play with Choton as the translator, the one who imagines he has all the necessary fluencies that allow him to traverse all the different spaces of the play, and he prides himself on that nimbleness. But in fact, there's listening and observation and attention that Raheem is able to step into, because he is on the outside, and therefore isn't so indoctrinated into the when-in-Romeness that Choton is trying so hard to inhabit—to be like his aunt and uncle, to be like the subjects he meets to interview for his research. In this effort, he perhaps surrenders his ability to have any kind of critical distance from what he's looking at and including himself in.

Raheem, on the other hand, is able to elicit a surprising frankness from the characters in the play.

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY Yes, yes, yes.

ALISA SOLOMON Like when the uncle tells Raheem his amazing dream. Raheem is its trusted audience and then becomes its interpreter.

ALISA SOLOMON So, let's talk about Raheem. In some

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY I always want to pay

ways, he serves as the eyes and ears for those of us who are non-Bengali. He guides us with his outsider view, and at the same time, because he's African American, he's not offering a colonial viewpoint or a white gaze; those of us who are also not Black are invited to experience this different world from a different perspective. There’s a passing reference in the play to Saidiya Hartman's great book, Lose Your Mother, in which she also traces a journey of return, but in this case, confronting the invisibility of her enslaved forebearers. So, Raheem is layered in this way and brings a particular frame by virtue of his background, and in a literal sense as a cameraman who is always framing events through an actual lens. Sorry. I'm just rambling about Raheem.

homage to my uncle whose verbatim dream that is. He had the dream in 1985 and shared it with me six or seven years ago, and I recorded a voice memo of it. He wasn't usually that vulnerable or forthcoming with me, but there was something about his coming into an understanding of what I do, that I was a director, that he was like, “Oh, therefore you can take this and make something of it.”

That interaction was the seed of the play.

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY No, no. I'm loving this.

ALISA SOLOMON Well, you please ramble about Raheem!

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY [Laughs] That

particular experience emerges out of my real life. My partner is Black American and is a visual artist. And even though the plot isn’t autobiographical, the given circumstances of how the two of us operate, on our many trips back to Kolkata, is a real texture from which I draw language in the play. It was a wonderful discovery to me that the play was about how Raheem can see Choton's 14

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He passed away right after the Soho Rep production closed. He was looking at photographs of the production in the hospital back in March and reflecting: “Yeah, that's the color of the bottle-green sari that I saw in my dream.” It takes a particular kind of attention to hold onto this dream and to think about it the way a cinematographer might. He was a retired civil engineer, but an artistic soul at heart. There are all sorts of quiet artists out there in our lives. Why am I able to be an artist and he not?

ALISA SOLOMON One place you dramatize that idea

is in the lovely moment when Jitesh, the household caretaker or family retainer—servant, really—sings, beautifully, and Raheem captures him on film.

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY That question of who gets to be an artist is really at the heart of the play for me.

“BETWEEN TWO WORLDS” ALISA SOLOMON That’s related to another mystery

in the play, but not the one a lot of commenters on the earlier productions seem to think it is. When Raheem is offered the use of Choton’s grandather’s old Rolleiflex camera he finds a roll of film in it from 30 years earlier and has it developed. No one in the household can figure out who took the photos that come back: pictures of the grandfather just days before his death. But the answer is supplied early if you’re paying attention. The more important and more vexing question is: what was the relationship like between photographer and subject?

And the play purposely offers no Big Reveal.

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY That open-endedness is deliberate on my part. We don't know what these photographs that get developed suggest. They allow different characters to project onto them many different possibilities. That’s the whole point to me. We experience this grandfather, who passed 30 years ago, only through the images the characters construct of him or what they project onto him.

ALISA SOLOMON We hear and see everyone’s reactions

to the photos, but don’t see the images themselves. We can understand that there is an intimacy in the photos, we know that much, but we don’t know the nature of that intimacy—it’s not necessarily erotic, not necessarily the sort of intimacy between a caregiver and a patient...

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY And intimacy doesn’t

ALISA SOLOMON necessarily mean a flattening of power between the subject and the photographer. Perhaps it is easier to be intimate with someone who you have power over, who would never reveal your secrets, who is a safe space by virtue of the position he holds. That's a question I've always asked myself about Jitesh and the grandfather's relationship.

ALISA SOLOMON Meanwhile, the only image we do see of the grandfather is a stern portrait hanging on the wall—like Hedda Gabler’s father!—that Choton has to turn around, against the wall, so he doesn’t feel like his grandfather is always watching him. Yet the grandfather ends up more the object of scrutiny than the one watching.

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY How much does that portrait reflect the grandfather himself, and how much is it Choton's father and his aunt turning him into a kind of ideal? He looms over the house. The house is a kind of museum to him, but not to him so much as an ideal they are trying to create out of the bits of him.

And those become constraints inside of which they then must live. There’s a legacy that Choton is living up to that may be an imagined false standard. He thinks it's his grandfather who's watching him, but really, he is watching himself; his own insecurities around his own body get projected onto his grandfather's gaze.

ALISA SOLOMON The grandfather is also represented

in an indeterminate, figurative way by a crow that flies into the house.

Abrar Haque (Choton) and Gargi Mukherjee (Pishimoni) in PUBLIC OBSCENITIES at Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Photo by Hollis King.

P U B L I C O B S C E N I T I E S 15

“BETWEEN TWO WORLDS” SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY When I'm back in

Kolkata, it makes sense to me somehow that this crow could have my grandfather's eyes. I don't know how to describe it. These houses have seen so much death. They themselves have been witnesses for so long. And they have a kind of porosity, between the outside world and the inside world. One time this animal—I forget what it's called in English, I think it’s called a fishercat—came in through the window at night and ate my birthday cake.

I'm sitting right now in my parents' home in Massachusetts and looking outside. There's a separation between me and the outside world here that I never feel when I'm in India. A crow is somehow relevant to the way I interact with the memory of my grandfather.

It makes sense there. There's a kind of magical realism to it, and it makes sense that that kind of storytelling would emerge out of that climate and place.

ALISA SOLOMON Let’s talk about the play’s title. On

one level it refers to India’s penal code that prohibits vaguely defined obscene acts in public.

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY The title comes

from a poem I wrote 14, 15 years ago that was called “Public Obscenities, Lakeside.” I had recently become aware that there was a colonial-era law on the books that effectively criminalized anything that could be construed as obscene behavior or utterance in public.

The play takes place, I imagine, in 2019, on the heels of homosexuality being decriminalized in India by the Supreme Court there. The play makes passing reference to the kinds of acts and gender-variant behavior that that this law has been used to police, like the distribution of safe sex materials. What’s construed as obscene, and how different characters in the play might use that word to talk about different behaviors and practices, is certainly of interest to me.

ALISA SOLOMON It also questions what ‘public’

means. Jitesh walks in on a hot moment between Choton and Raheem, and because of Jitesh’s status, the play shows how the two differ on whether his seeing them even counts. And the uncle’s flirtation on-line—is communication over the internet public or private?

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY Yeah. When there

is a law that says certain behavior can only happen in 16

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ALISA SOLOMON private, but not in public—I mean, what is public and what is private?

ALISA SOLOMON You are the director as well as the playwright. Are writing and directing separate or fused aspects of your process?

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY I was adamant with

myself about writing it without having my director's hat on. But once I was directing the piece, there were things I learned about what's happening in the play.

ALISA SOLOMON Such as?

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY The last couple of days

I've been doing subtle rewrites. I've been paying attention, for example, to the kind of learning Raheem undergoes in his relationship with Jitesh. There's something about the photographs that Raheem wants to learn from as an artist. Watching Jakeem [Dante Powell] play the character, I’m more attentive now to how Raheem’s artistry shifts from photograph to photograph that he's taking. It's not something that anyone other than me might notice, but it helps me understand the texture of the revelation that Raheem is wrestling with at the end of the play, about what he wants to make as an artist. The great gift of being able to work with the same cast, who themselves are deepening their interpretations of the characters, is that I get to deepen my understanding of the characters alongside them, which I'm then able to bring back into the rewriting process. It is a very iterative thing for me. I don't know how I would ever freeze the script. Somebody else would have to direct it. But it does feel like, in this particular instance, the playwright chose the right director. [laughs] That might not always be the case.

ALISA SOLOMON Having both roles does, in a way, echo

the project of being the translator between two languages.

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY Yes, between two worlds.

ALISA SOLOMON What has it meant for you to see

New York’s and Washington’s Bengali communities coming out to the play?

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY Oh, it still feels unreal to me! First of all, it still feels unreal to listen to Bangla on stages where I've never heard it before. There’s a hunger the production has tapped into in the Bengali

“BETWEEN TWO WORLDS”

ALISA SOLOMON

Golam Sarwar Harun (Jitesh), Tashnuva Anan (Shou), Jakeem Dante Powell (Raheem) and Abrar Haque (Choton) in PUBLIC OBSCENITIES at Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Photo by Hollis King.

community, which has such a long tradition of theatremaking and theatre-going. Theatre is deeply embedded in what it means to be a contemporary Bengali.

That tradition is one that I've never seen reflected in American professional theatre.

A lot of the talk around the play has been, “Oh, what's innovative about it is that it's a bilingual play in Bangla and English.” But for myself and the cast members who are Bengali, it is also unlike anything that we've seen in Bengali theatre before, in terms of the questions it's wrestling with, its form, its patient naturalism, and also, there are languages that Bengali audience members will be unfamiliar with—not only the language of Grindr, but also the vernacular that Shou and Sebanti [Indian queer and trans characters] speak. I've been really moved by how Bengali audiences, which are diverse—Muslim and Hindu, Bangladeshi and West Bengali, folks raised on the subcontinent and in the diaspora, different generations of folks—are coming out in droves to see the play. That the play is resonating across the board is completely unexpected to me and so moving.

It’s a two-way conversation. I hadn't really spent any time in Kensington, which is only a mile away from

where I live, until Councilmember Shahana Hanif came to the production. We got to meet, and I got to know about the work she is doing in the community there.

I'm learning about the landscape of New York Bengali life through the play. And that universe is coming out to meet the world of New York professional theatre that they may never have felt invited to before. I'm so excited that we get to show the play in Brooklyn.

.

ALISA SOLOMON is a teacher, writer and dramaturg living in New York City. She directs the Arts and Culture concentration in the MA program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Her criticism, essays, and political reporting have appeared in a wide range of magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Nation, Jewish Currents, Forward, Theater, and Village Voice (where she was on the staff for 21 years). She is the author of the award-winning books, Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender and Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof.

She is (co-)editor of several anthologies, among them: Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the IsraeliPalestinian Conflict (with Tony Kushner; Grove, 2003) and a book of material by and about Robbie McCauley (with Elin Diamond and Cynthia Carr, forthcoming from TCG.) As dramaturg, she is currently working with Anna Deavere Smith on her new play, Love All. P U B L I C O B S C E N I T I E S 17

THE PRODUCTION

CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

TASHNUVA ANAN (Shou, she/her) is a pioneering transgender human rights activist, actress, model, and dancer hailing from Bangladesh. She was the first Bangladeshi transgender news anchor, and the sole Bangladeshi representative on the ILGA World board. With a background in public health, she has been advocating for the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of SOGIESC (sexual orientation, gender identity, expression, and sex characteristics) individuals in South Asia. Her notable roles in drama are "Target Platun," "Tamoshik" and "Khona" etc. She has received Drama Desk Award and the Annyanya Human Rights Award.

ABRAR HAQUE (Choton, he/him) recently made his NY and off-Broadway debut with Public Obscenities at

Soho Rep, and is thrilled to be back telling this incredible story. Other recent credits include Babu in a reading of Accidental Feminist (The Public Theater), Fouad in Refugee Rhapsody (Artists Repertory Theater) and Florizel in A Winter’s Tale (Portland Shakes). He thanks his friends and family for their authenticity, compassion, and love.

IG: @ahawk19

GOLAM SARWAR HARUN (Jitesh, he/him) is a singer, actor, playwright, and director. He recently completed

an off-Broadway and Woolly Mammoth run of Public Obscenities and won the Drama Desk Ensemble award for Outstanding Performance. Harun also directs films and television commercials. As an actor, he has played the lead in Three Penny Opera, and Marat-Sade, among others. He is the Artistic Director of Dhaka Drama, a theater group founded in Queens. He has co-directed plays like Stories of Jackson Heights, I Shakuntala, No Man’s Land, Nirastra (Unarmed), and directed Dhaboman (The Run), among others. His works have featured in multiple South Asian Theatre Festivals. Harun has acted in multiple films from Bangladesh, and most notably in Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist in the US.

Abrar Haque (Choton) and Tashnuva Anan (Shou) in PUBLIC OBSCENITIES at Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Photo by Hollis King.

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THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM GARGI MUKHERJEE (Pishimoni, she/her) has recently performed in the off-Broadway (Soho Rep) and Woolly

Mammoth runs of Public Obscenities. She has won the Drama Desk Ensemble Award for Outstanding Performance and was nominated by Drama League for the Distinguished Performance award in Public Obscenities. She is seen on a regular basis as an actor/director at the South Asian Theater Festival, held every year at NBPAC, NJ and has performed with Royal Family Productions. Her film credits include, The Namesake, Karma Calling, and others. She has written/co-written and co-directed well-received plays performed in the tri-state area.

NAFIS (Sebanti, they/she/he) is a Bangladesh-born and raised, non-binary, queer actor and singer based in NYC.

They are thrilled to be making their TFANA debut, reprising her Drama Desk-winning role of Sebanti in Public Obscenities! Select credits include THEATRE: TINDERELLA: The Modern Musical (Dylan; Broadway World: Best Performer in a Musical), RENT (Angel), The 25th Annual...Spelling Bee (Barfeé), Place of Assembly (Mr. Marsh), The Fold (Khalil), Polar Express (KIA). FILM: Who Killed Taniya (Nadiya). NaFis was also seen in the New York City Center production of Lady in the Dark. CONCERTS/CABARETS: Carnegie Hall, 54Below, Don’t Tell Mama.

NaFis dedicates her performance in PO to the Hijras and Kotis and is thankful for the opportunity. "Follow your dreams and find your chosen family! <3" IG: @nafis_storyteller.

JAKEEM DANTE POWELL (Raheem, he/him) can be seen in George C. Wolfe’s Netflix feature Rustin produced

by The Obamas' Higher Ground Production Company. His recent credits include: Public Obscenities (Soho Rep, Drama Desk for Best Ensemble), Slave Play (Broadway and LA premiere), and the streaming play This American Wife (alongside Pulitzer finalists Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley). He is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. Instagram: @jakeemdpowell.

DEBASHIS ROY CHOWDHURY (Pishe, he/him) had his off-Broadway debut in 2023 with Soho Rep and NAATCO’s Public Obscenities. He and the cast received Drama Desk’s Ensemble Award in 2023. Debashis was initiated into theater during his college days in Kolkata, India and was inspired by Badal Sarkar’s third-theater form.

In USA, he had acted in English and Bengali plays produced by theater groups in Boston, notably Off-Kendrik and SETU. Some of his notable roles were: Master-chef Byakaron Singh in Boro Holo J (Off-Kendrik, Boston); Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Vatia in Spartacus, written by Badal Sarkar (Kolkata); Kaka-saheb in Vijay Tendulkar’s Kamala (SETU, Boston). Debashis studies vocal music in North Indian Classical tradition. He resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.

SHREYO BANERJEE (Choton U/S, he/him) is an actor, writer, and musician, born in Mumbai and based in

Brooklyn, NY. He studied theater at the Playwrights Horizons Theater School in New York University. Favorite performance venues include the Baltimore Hippodrome, the streets of the Edinburgh Fringe, and the back porch of a tiny countryside hotel in Poland. He is delighted to add the stage at TFANA to that list. Away from the lights, Shreyo may be found haunting used book stores, and else, playing chess, geoguessr, or guitar.

RAJIB BHAT TACHARYA (Pishe/Jitesh U/S, he/him) made his recent debut with the closing show of Public Obscenities at Woolly Mammoth in December 2023. San Fransisco/Bay Area theatre credits include: Kafan, Taconic Parkway, Selfish Giant (musical), The Odd Couple, Merchant of Venice (musical), Pyaka Dekha. Fluent in English, Bengali, Hindi and Nepalese, he has also performed as a lead singer in many Bay Area concerts. He has been instrumental in leading an annual international Bengali festival of plays christened Bengali Natya Mela in the Bay Area for the last fifteen years. He is a technology leader in the semiconductor space and has worked for many leading companies in the Bay Area, the most recent being VP of Engineering at Synaptics.

JONATHAN NATHANIEL DINGLE-EL (Raheem U/S, he/him). As an artist, Jonathan Nathaniel is inspired to create theater that is accessible to inner-city communities of color. As a Brooklyn College BFA Acting Program graduate in NYC, he has worked with many artists from diverse communities of varying skill sets. He has worked P U B L I C O B S C E N I T I E S 19

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM with many local organizations in New York City such as Abrons Arts Center and The Motor Company NYC, a company whose work focuses on increasing site-responsive theater in local hubs around NYC such as parks, bars, laundromats, and rivers. Jonathan teaches improvisation and theater devising and is currently the director of Urban Youth Theater, an acting ensemble for teens. Jonathan thanks his students at Abrons Arts Center and UNHS, his mom Ms. Redd and SamMom. KOMOLIKA (Shou/Shebanti U/S, she/they): Komolika is an actress, singer, spoken word poet, filmmaker,

and model from Kolkata, India, currently based in Davis, California. She is a third-year Cinema and Theatre double-major at UC Davis, having performed in various department productions on-campus. She has been on RollingStone India’s Pride Gig 2020 and is an NYC Youth Poet Laureate Fellow. As a singer, she has performed on stages across Kolkata and Davis. She has created and starred in her own short films, which have been screened at spaces including Outfest Fusion Film Festival. She advocates for her LGBTQIA+ community through her work as an artist, and as a Bengali trans-fem artist from Kolkata, she is honoured to undertake the roles of Shou and Sebanti. Instagram: @komolikaaa_.

MITA PAUL (Pishimoni U/S, she/her) was initiated into theater during her college days in Kolkata. Passionate

about theater, Mita believes it to be an advocate and a powerful medium for meaningful conversation among our diverse communities. She is a founding member of two Theater groups, Ebong Theatrix (DC-VA-MD) and CLTW (NC), and has been acting and producing several English, Bengali, and Hindi plays since the 90s. Mita recently had the privilege of working with and learning from the eminent director Mr. Suman Mukhopadhyay in Shunyo Shudhu Shunyo Noy (EBong Theatrix 2022) and is looking forward to another thrilling and enriching experience as part of the cast of Public Obscenities. She thanks her family for all their love and support.

SHAYOK MISHA CHOWDHURY (Playwright, Director, he/him) is a many-tentacled artist, born in India,

based in Brooklyn. He is the recipient of an Obie Award, the Relentless Award, the Mark O’Donnell Prize, a Princess Grace Award, Drama Desk and Drama League nominations, and a Jonathan Larson Grant for writing musical theater. Misha collaborated on the Grammy-winning album Calling All Dawns. Other favorites: Brother, Brother (New York Theatre Workshop) with Aleshea Harris; SPEECH (Philly Fringe) with Lightning Rod Special; MukhAgni (Under the Radar @ The Public) with Kameron Neal. A Sundance, Fulbright, and Kundiman Fellow, Misha is the creator of VICHITRA, a series of short films rooted in queer South Asian imagination. His poetry has been published in The Cincinnati Review, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. BA: Stanford. MFA: Columbia.

PEIYI WONG (Scenic Designer, she/her) is a Bessie Award-winning scenographer and interdisciplinary artist

based in Brooklyn, NY. She designs sets, installations, and costumes for live performance. Recent Off-Broadway– set design: A Good Day To Me Not to You (Waterwell), The Whitney Album (Soho Rep), Weightless (WP Theater), A Delicate Balance (Transport Group | NAATCO), The Vicksburg Project (Mabou Mines), SPEECH (Lightning Rod Special), Song About Trains (Working Theater | Radical Evolution), Memoirs of a…Unicorn (NYLA, 2018 Bessie Outstanding Design), HOUSECONCERT (Object Collection), Charleses (The Brick, Hewes nomination); set + costume design: A Hunger Artist (Sinking Ship), The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Transport Group), MukhAgni (The Public UTR). In 2023 she was the recipient of the Edith Lutyens & Bel Geddes Design Enhancement Fund and NYSCA Support for Artists Grants. Faculty at Playwrights Horizons, NYU Tisch. MFA, California Institute of the Arts. www.peiyiameliawong.com

ENVER CHAKARTASH (Costume Designer, they/them) is a British-born Turkish Cypriot. Broadway: A Doll’s

House, Is This A Room. Off-Broadway: Stereophonic (Playwright’s Horizons), Toros (Second Stage Theatre), Public Obscenities (Soho Rep.), The Trees (Playwright’s Horizons), Wolf Play (MCC/Soho Rep.), Catch as Catch Can (Playwright’s Horizons), English (Atlantic Theater Company/Roundabout Theatre Company), Bodies They Ritual (Clubbed Thumb). Other recent works: Tina Satter/Half Straddle’s Ghost Rings; The Wooster Group’s A Pink Chair,

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THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

NaFis (Sebanti) and Abrar Haque (Choton). in PUBLIC OBSCENITIES at Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Photo by Hollis King.

The B-side, The Town Hall Affair, Early Shaker Spirituals; Reggie Wilson/ Fist & Heel Performance Group’s POWER. Film: Reality (HBO).

BARBARA SAMUELS (Lighting Designer, she/her) is an award-winning queer lighting designer, organizer and producer creating design-forward live events that prioritize generosity, equity, and representation. New York credits include designs at Soho Rep, MCC, Lincoln Center, Ars Nova, NYTW, Playwrights Horizons, WP Theater, The Bushwick Starr, Beth Morrison Projects, New Georges, and Clubbed Thumb. Regional: Pig Iron, Bard Summerscape, The Alley, Long Wharf, ACT., Woolly Mammoth, Playmakers, Kansas City Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse, Shakespeare Theater Company, and Trinity Rep. New Georges Affiliated Artist. 2016 Target Margin Institute. Wingspace Member.

WP Lab 2022-24. BA, Fordham; MFA, NYU. Proud member of USA829. www.barbarasamuels.com TEI BLOW (Sound Designer, he/him) is a media designer, technologist and performance maker. Tei’s work has been

seen at Hartford Stage, Dance Theater Workshop, PS122, Lincoln Center, The Kitchen, BAM, The Public Theater, The Broad Stage, MCA Chicago, MFA Boston, Kate Werble Gallery, Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Roundabout, The Wadsworth Atheneum, and at theaters around the world. He is the recipient of The Henry Hewes Award, NYSCA Composer's Grant, the Bessie Award, and the Creative Capital Award.

JOHNNY MORENO (Video/Projection Design, he/him) is a media and production designer for live

performances, creative director & filmmaker working across multiple disciplines. Scenic & Video design: Fandango for Butterflies (and coyotes); La Jolla Playhouse, Video & Lighting Design Director: Multi-Grammy award winning recording artist Lila Downs, Production Design: José Rivera’s The Fall of a Sparrow; Film, Cinematography: I Am A Seagull by The Chekhov Project; Film. Executive Producer: Early Light; Film. Weightless; WP Theater, For All the Women Who Thought They Were Mad; Soho Rep, A Grave is Given Supper; New Ohio Theater, Addressless; Rattlestick Theater. Drama Desk & Hewes Design Award Nominee. https://linktr.ee/johnnymoreno @johnnymoreno MFA Yale School of Drama.

P U B L I C O B S C E N I T I E S 21

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM PATRICIA MARJORIE (Properties Designer, she/her) is a Brazilian Multidisciplinary theatre artist based in New

York with focus on directing, scenic, costume, and props design. Next works: scenic and costume designer for Primordial (The Tank), The Lydian Gale Parr (Target Margin), both directed by Meghan Finn; props for Corruption by J.T. Rogers and directed by Bartlett Sher (Lincoln Center Theater). Recent works: costume designer for The Time Machine directed by Joshua Gelb (PHTS); set design for Re MEMORI by Nambi E. Kelley (WP Theater); props for Wolf Play directed by Dustin Wills (MCC, Soho Rep), YOU WILL GET SICK directed

by Sam Pinkelton (Roundabout), Flex directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz (Lincoln Center Theater), Ulysses and The Seagull by Elevator Repair Service, Notes on Killing Seven Oversight... by Mara Vélez Meléndez (Soho Rep); 7 Minutes by Waterwell, directed by Mei Ann Teo; Black Exhibition by Jeremy O. Harris, directed by Machel Ross.

Patricia has also recently performed in Mrs. Loman directed by Meghan Finn and directed What Will Become of Kaaron? by Kaaron Briscoe and her own work as a playwright A Song to Keep the Wolves Awake at The Tank.

SARAH LUNNIE (Dramaturg, she/her) is an interdisciplinary new-works dramaturg. Theater collaborations

include the first productions of Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s Public Obscenities; Heidi Schreck’s What The Constitution Means to Me; Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2 and The Christians; Jeff Augustin’s Where the Mountain Meets the Sea, featuring original music by The Bengsons; Charles Mee’s Under Construction, made with SITI Company; and, with The Mad Ones, Mrs. Murray’s Menagerie and Miles for Mary, among many others.

She has produced a number of projects for Audible, including Christopher Chen’s The Podcaster. She frequently supports emerging choreographers at the New York Choreographic Institute at New York City Ballet. Sarah was previously the Literary Manager at Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Literary Director at Playwrights Horizons, and an Associate Artistic Director of the Jungle Theater. She is currently the Senior Dramaturg of the Public Theater.

SUKANYA CHAKRABARTI (Cultural Dramaturg, she/her). Born and raised in Kolkata, Dr. Sukanya Chakrabarti, an artist-scholar-teacher, received her doctoral degree in Theater and Performance Studies from Stanford University.

She is an Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at San Jose State University. Dr. Chakrabarti is the author of In-Between Worlds: Performing [as] Bauls in an Age of Extremism, which examines the performance of Bauls, ‘folk’ performers from Bengal, in the context of a rapidly globalizing Indian economy against the backdrop of extreme nationalistic discourses.

Both as a scholar and an artist, she is interested in spaces and their contribution to meaning-making, placemaking and storytelling. Her current and ongoing research project is on performances of the South Asian diaspora across generations of immigration in California. As an artist, she has worked as a playwright, director, dramaturg, and performer in New York, the Bay Area, and Kolkata. More details about her projects can be found on her website: www.sukanyac.com.

ANDREW WADE (Resident Voice Director). The Royal Shakespeare Company: 1987-2003 (Voice Assistant), 1990

-2003 (Head of Voice). Since 2003: The Acting Company, Guthrie Theater, Stella Adler Studio (Master Teacher Voice and Shakespeare). Currently: The Public Theater (Director of Voice), Juilliard (Faculty Drama Division).

Broadway: Harry Potter and The Cursed Child Parts One and Two (U.S. Head of Voice and Dialect), King Lear with Glenda Jackson (Voice Coach), Matilda the Musical (Director of Voice, Broadway and national tour), A Christmas Carol and tour, A Bronx Tale the Musical. Film: Shakespeare in Love. Workshops and lectures: Worldwide. Fellow of Rose Bruford College.

TENIECE DIVYA JOHNSON (Intimacy Director, they/them) is an Intimacy Director, Fight Director, Stunt

Performer, and Movement Storyteller working across television, film and stage. The first Black and first nonbinary intimacy director on Broadway with Slave Play and first Black intimacy coordinator working on TV/ Film, Teniece serves as a resolute advocate for a decolonized collaborative approach to art, Black intimacy, Kink and Queer representation. They are also the founder of www.BlackIntimacyConsentCollective.org, a community based educational organization around Black intimacy, consent and wellness. Off-stage they share consent-based advocacy with colleges, universities, corporations and other organizations to promote healthy community practices.

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THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

Abrar Haque (Choton), Debashis Roy Chowdhury (Pishe) and Jakeem Dante Powell (Raheem) in PUBLIC OBSCENITIES at Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Photo by Hollis King.

Additional credits: “Succession,” “Pose,” “Ramy,” “Reacher,” “She Hulk”, “Picard”, Blackkklansman, West Side Story, The Underground Railroad, MJ the Musical, Harry Potter, Richard III and RAQI on "Power Book II: Ghost."

TOMMY KURZMAN (Hair and Wigs, he/him) Broadway credits include: I Need That, Gutenberg:The Musical!, The Cottage, Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Pictures From Home, The Collaboration, Macbeth, Mrs. Doubtfire, All My Sons, True West, Saint Joan, My Fair Lady, Little Foxes and Bright Star. Off-Broadway credits include: Little Shop of Horrors, MCC, Atlantic, The New Group, The Public, MTC, and NWS. Regional credits include The Huntington, The Muny, Geva Theatre, Resident Ensemble Players, Cape Playhouse, Signature VA, and MSM. Instagram: @tommykurzmanwigs TENLEY PITONZO (Stage Manager, she/her) Select Credits: Public Obscenities (Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company); The Garbologists (Forward Theater Company); Life is a Dream, Our Town (Baltimore Center Stage); seven method of killing kylie jenner (The Public Theater, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company); Slanted! Enchanted! (Alldayeveryday Productions); The African Company Presents Richard III (Great River Shakespeare Festival); Rooted (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park); for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, Unreliable, School Girls or the African Mean Girls Play, Last Days of Summer, Sweeney Todd (Kansas City Repertory Theatre). AEA Member.

ANNIE CHOUDHURY (Assistant Stage Manager, she/they) is a DMV multidisciplinary artist. They love shaping

dense conceptual, theatrical, and visual works. After graduating from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2009 with a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre they worked as a theatre artist and technician in the DC area and along the east coast. They are building off the pleasure of being the Stage Manager for several companies including Christopher K. Morgan & Artists, Heart Stück Bernie, and PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER. They also spent eight years at Dance Place as their Resident Stage Manager, Master Electrician, and Associate Technical Director before leaving to pursue independent ventures. They want to thank all of their fellow artists for making this show possible!

P U B L I C O B S C E N I T I E S 23

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

Jakeem Dante Powell (Raheem) and Golam Sarwar Harun (Jitesh) in PUBLIC OBSCENITIES at Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Photo by Hollis King.

PAULINA "PAU" TOBAR (Assistant Stage Manager, she/her) is stage manager and performer artist originally from Santiago, Chile and based in New York City. She graduated from The American Musical and Dramatic Academy’s Integrated Program and obtained her BFA in Musical Theatre at The New School, NY. Some of her Stage Management credits are: NYC: The Office Plays (NYU); Brilliance (The Players Theatre); Buggy Baby (APAC); All Is Fair I & II (Quest Players); The Waterman (The Players Theatre); Puka Who? (Rising Sun Performance Company); The Changeling (Rude Grooms); The Award Goes To (Tada! Theatre); REGIONAL: Your Name Means Dream (CATF); Life is a Dream (ASM; Baltimore Center Stage) IG: @pautobarmusic STEPHANIE YANKWITT (CSA, Casting) Select credits, TV/Film: In The Summers (Lexicon/Exile), Growing Up (Disney+).

Broadway: Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. Off Broadway/NYC: Public Obscenities (Soho Rep), Fairview (Soho Rep, Theatre for a New Audience), Lunch Bunch (Clubbed Thumb/PlayCo.). Resident Casting team for Soho Rep, Tectonic Theater Project, and Long Wharf Theatre. Regional work includes ongoing work with La Jolla Playhouse & Miami New Drama. Upcoming: Here There Are Blueberries (NYTW/Tectonic), The Fires (Soho Rep). tbdcastingco.com TBD CASTING CO. (Casting) Proud Casting office of Public Obscenities at Soho Rep, Woolly Mammoth, and

now Theatre for a New Audience. Resident Casting office for Soho Rep, Tectonic Theater Project, Long Wharf Theatre. Current/upcoming in NYC: Here There Are Blueberries (NYTW/Tectonic), The Fires (Soho Rep), FISH (Keen Co./Working Theater), ISABEL (NAATCO). Select credits, theatre: Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (Broadway), Fairview (Soho Rep, TFANA, Berkeley Rep); Film/TV: In The Summers (Lexicon/Exile, 2024 Official selection, Sundance), Growing Up (Disney+/Culture House). Regional work includes ongoing work with La Jolla Playhouse & TheaterWorks Hartford. @tbdcastingco BLAKE ZIDELL & ASSOCIATES (Press Representative) is a Brooklyn-based public relations firm representing

arts organizations and cultural institutions. Clients include St. Ann’s Warehouse, Playwrights Horizons, Signature Theatre, Soho Rep, National Sawdust, The Kitchen, Performance Space New York, PEN America, StoryCorps, Symphony Space, the Fisher Center at Bard, Peak Performances, Irish Arts Center, the Merce Cunningham Trust, the Onassis Foundation, Taylor Mac, Page 73, The Playwrights Realm, PlayCo and more.

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T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE . Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, this is Theatre for a New Audience’s

(TFANA) 44th season. Through its productions of Shakespeare and other new plays, humanities initiatives and programs in NYC public schools, TFANA creates adventurous dialogues with diverse audiences. TFANA has produced 33 of Shakespeare’s 38 plays alongside an international mix of classical and contemporary drama; promotes ongoing artistic development through its Merle Debuskey Studio Fund; and in 2001, growing from a collaboration with Cicely Berry, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s director of voice, TFANA became the first American theatre company invited to bring a production of Shakespeare to the RSC.

WOOLLY MAMMOTH THEATRE COMPANY The Tony Award®-winning Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

creates badass theatre that highlights the stunning, challenging, and tremendous complexity of our world. For over 40 years, Woolly has maintained a high standard of artistic rigor while simultaneously daring to take risks, innovate, and push beyond perceived boundaries. One of the few remaining theatres in the country to maintain a company of artists, Woolly serves an essential research and development role within the American theatre.

Plays premiered here have gone on to productions at hundreds of theatres all over the world and have had lasting impacts on the field. Currently co-led by Artistic Director Maria Manuela Goyanes and Managing Director Kimberly E. Douglas, Woolly is located in Washington, DC, equidistant from the Capitol and the White House.

This unique location influences Woolly’s investment in actively working towards an equitable, participatory, and creative democracy. Woolly Mammoth stands upon occupied, unceded territory: the ancestral homeland of the Nacotchtank whose descendants belong to the Piscataway peoples. Furthermore, the foundation of this city, and most of the original buildings in Washington, DC, were funded by the sale of enslaved people of African descent and built by their hands.

SOHO REP provides radical theater makers with productions of the highest caliber and tailor-made development

at key junctures in their artistic practice. We elevate artists as thought leaders and citizens who change the field and society. Artistic autonomy is paramount at Soho Rep; we encourage an unmediated connection between artists and audiences to create a springboard for transformation and rich civic life beyond the walls of its theater. Soho Rep was named the “Best Theater in NYC” by Time Out New York in their Best of the City Awards, noting, "Soho Rep isn’t the last word in downtown experimental theater: Better than that, it’s often the first, championing major voices at key points in their careers… and Soho Rep’s low ticket prices, help keep some of the city’s bravest, boldest and wildest theater within the reach of all New Yorkers." Plays that have premiered at Soho Rep’s and gone onto future productions include: Aleshea Harris’s Is God Is, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon, Hansol Jung’s Wolf Play which received 5 Lortel Awards including Outstanding Play, and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview which was also recognized with the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. For more info, visit sohorep.org.

THE NATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN THEATRE CO. (NAATCO). The National Asian American Theatre Co. (NAATCO)

was founded in 1989 by Mia Katigbak (NAATCO Actor-Manager) and Richard Eng to assert the presence and significance of Asian American theatre in the United States, demonstrating its vital contributions to the fabric of American culture. NAATCO puts into service its total commitment to Asian American theatre practitioners to more accurately represent onstage the multi- and inter-cultural dynamics of our society. By doing so, they demonstrate a rich tapestry of cultural difference bound by the American experience. The enrichment accrues to each different culture as well as to America as a whole. NAATCO was the recipient of the Obies’ Ross Wetzsteon Award, the Lucille Lortel Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women for their work “highlighting the multi- and intercultural dynamics of our society” and the Rosetta LeNoire Award from Actors' Equity Association in recognition of its contribution toward increasing diversity and non-traditional casting in American theatre. NAATCO was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play, as well as Outstanding Costume Design for a Play for their acclaimed production of Henry VI: Shakespeare's Trilogy in Two Parts. For more information, visit NAATCO.org.

P U B L I C O B S C E N I T I E S 25

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM UNDER THE RADAR (RADAR) is a festival celebrating new theater and performance works from both around the world and down the street, taking place from January 5 – 21, 2024. Produced and programmed by thirteen different venues in collaboration with RADAR founder Mark Russell and Producer ArKtype (Thomas O. Kriegsmann, President & Sami Pyne, Producing Director), RADAR 2024 addresses a city, a country, and the world with the voices of innovative multidisciplinary artists speaking to their time. The festival stands for transparency, equity, and equal collaboration in the development of new live works. It represents global citizenship, innovation, and a platform for those whose voices have yet to be heard. Radar began as a beta concept in January 2003 entitled Fresh Terrain: A Performance Art/Theatre Festival & Symposium, co-produced by the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Theatre and Dance and New York’s Performance Space 122. With St. Ann’s Warehouse followed by The Public Theater as partners, it established itself in NYC as an annual meeting point for producers, presenters, and their international counterparts interested in the burgeoning alternative theater scene at home mixed with international work with national and local artists, to give a spotlight on new artists and new global developments in the field, from Asia, Africa, Australia, the Middle East, to Europe. More info at utrfest.org.

ACTORS' EQUITY ASSOCIATION (“Equity”), founded in 1913, is the U.S. labor union that represents more than

50,000 actors and stage managers. Equity seeks to foster the art of live theatre as an essential component of society and advances the careers of its members by negotiating wages and working conditions and providing a wide range of benefits including health and pension plans. Actors’ Equity is a member of the AFL-CIO and is affiliated with FIA, an international organization of performing arts unions. #EquityWorks STAFF FOR PUBLIC OBSCENITIES

Associate Director..................................... Mekala Sridhar Associate Scenic Designer........................ Oscar Escobedo Associate Lighting Designer..................... Graham Zellers Associate Sound Designer............................. John Gasper Video Programmers...... Robert Feffer, Matthew Deinhart Props Coordinator........................................ Jonno Knust Production Assistant.............................. Carson Ferguson Head Carpenter................................................. Leon Axt Carpenters...Cory Asinofsky, Steven Cepeda, Daniel Cohen, Julia Conlon, Mark D’Agostino, Ellie Engstrom, Max Frank, Helen Hylton, Frann McCrann, Tobias Segal, Henry Witherow-Culpepper Riggers......... Cory Asinofsky, Helen Hylton, Tobias Segal Scenic Artists......... Hannah Birch-Carl, Nayah Houston, Alex Kowalczyk, Ava Rand Props/Deck Carpenter...................... Tristan Viner-Brown Wardrobe Supervisor............................. Anna Kate Spears Hair/Wig Supervisor............................... Heather Hardin Wardrobe Day Crew.................................... James Strunk Production Electrician.............................. Michael Cahill Electricians........... Erin Bulman, Darcy Burke, Ryan Clark, Jeffrey D’Ambrosio, Cat Dawes, AJ Durham, DJ Fralin, Evan Gomez, Lillian Hilmes, Mikelle Kelly, Jared Kemp, Iman Louis-Jeune, Megan Mahoney, Ciara McAloon, Tony Mulanix, Alex Nemfakos, Melissa Ore, Alyssa Paulo, Sydnee Peterson, Caitlynne Simonton Light Board Programmer and Operator...... Paul Kennedy Production Audio............ Erik Cereghino, Daniel Massey Audio Technicians......... Hayden Bearden, Rudy Bearden, Alan Cabrera, Cheyenne Chao, Simone Fisher, Zen Perry 26

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

Sound Board Operator..................................... Nata Price Production Video................................... Dan Santamaria Video Technicians.. Daniel Massey, Zen Perry, David Valle CREDITS Video Equipment Provided by 4Wall Entertainment Additional Lighting Equipment Provided by PRG Additional Sound Equipment Provided by FiveOHM Productions SPECIAL THANKS Kameron Neal, Bulbul Chakraborty, Partha Chowdhury, Chandana Chakraborty, Pradip Chakraborty, Sailendra Chandra Chakraborty, Anima Chakravarty, Ramkrishna Chaudhuri, Lakshmi Chaudhuri, Roke Chaudhuri, Imani Roach, Christina Ho, Elena Botkin-Levy, Durba Mitra, Lindsay Tanner, Shankhamala Khan, Shakuntala Khan Bhaduri, Shikha Khan, Gopa Chattopadhyay, Prabir Chaudhury, Archee Roy, Parjanya Sen, Sayak Manna, Pranay Das, Kaustav Manna, Debanuj Dasgupta, Gour Paramanik, Bhanu Mondol, Kali Bera, Minu Das, Sutanuka Bhattacharya, Madan Das, Malina Mondol, Cherríe Moraga, Bandana Chattopadhyay, Nirendra Kumar Bhattacharyya, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Ucross Foundation, the Sundance Institute, and the Jerome Foundation.

Ruma’s Kitchen in Woodside for their generous contribution.

Theatre for a New Audience and the production of PUBLIC OBSCENITIES acknowledge the wonderful support of 4Wall Entertainment and project manager Michael Lord in realizing the video design of this production.

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE LEADERSHIP JEFFREY HOROWITZ (Founding Artistic Director) began his career in theatre as an actor and appeared

on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in regional theatre. In 1979, he founded Theatre for a New Audience.

Horowitz has served on the panel of the New York State Council on the Arts, on the board of directors of Theatre Communications Group, the advisory board of the Shakespeare Society and the artistic directorate of London’s Globe Theatre. Awards: 2003 John Houseman Award from The Acting Company, 2004 Gaudium Award from Breukelein Institute, 2019 Obie Lifetime Achievement and TFANA’s 2020 Samuel H. Scripps.

DOROTHY RYAN (Managing Director) joined Theatre for a New Audience in 2003 after a ten-year

fundraising career with the 92nd Street Y and Brooklyn Museum. Ryan began her career in classical music artist management and also served as company manager and managing leader for several regional opera companies. She is a Brooklyn Women of Distinction honoree and serves as treasurer of the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance.

JEREMY BLUNT (General Manager). Prior to joining TFANA in 2023, Jeremy was the managing director of

the Sierra Repertory Theatre in Sonora, California. Before that, he was on the general management team at Broadway Asia where he worked on DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda Spectacular Live and served as the contract affairs coordinator at the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. MFA: performing arts management, Brooklyn College. MBA, bachelor of science in business administration, California Baptist University. He proudly served in the U.S. Army and Air National Guard, retiring in 2021 after holding multiple leadership positions.

Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Photo © David Sundberg/Esto.

Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage. Photo © Francis Dzikowski/OTTO.

P U B L I C O B S C E N I T I E S 27

ABOUT THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE About Theatre for a New Audience

S TA F F

Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, the mission of Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) is to be home for Shakespeare and other contemporary authors. TFANA is dedicated to the ongoing search for a living, human theatre and forging an immediate exchange with an audience that is always new and different from the last one. With Shakespeare as its guide, the Theatre builds a dialogue that spans centuries between the language and ideas of diverse authors, past and present. In addition to its productions, TFANA offers development opportunities for artists through its Merle Debuskey Studio Fund, engages with the community through free Humanities programs, and created and sustains the largest in-depth arts Executive Committee in education programs to introduce Shakespeare and classic drama to Alan Beller New York City Public School students.

Robert E. Buckholz

Founding Artistic Director Jeffrey Horowitz Managing Director Dorothy Ryan General Manager Jeremy Blunt Theatre for a New Audience Education Programs Director of Institutional Advancement Theatre for a New Audience’s education programs introduce James J. Lynes Finance Director Mary Sormeley students to Shakespeare and other classics with the same artistic Education Director Lindsay Tanner integrity that we apply to our productions. Through our unique and Capital Campaign Director exciting methodology, students engage in hands-on learning that George Brennan Director of Marketing & Communications involves all aspects of literacy set in the context of theatre education.

Eddie Carlson Our residencies are structured to address City and State Learning Facilities Director Rashawn Caldwell Standards both in English Language Arts and the Arts, the New York Production Manager Brett Anders City DOE’s Curriculum Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in Technical Director Joe Galan Company Manager Molly Burdick Theater, and the New York State Common Core Learning Standards Theatre Manager Lawrence Dial for English Language Arts. Begun in 1984, our programs have served Box Office Manager Allison Byrum more than 140,000 students, ages 9 through 18, in New York City Marketing Manager Angela Renzi Public Schools city-wide.

Associate Director of Development Sara Billeaux Artistic Associate Peter J. Cook Education Coordinator Emma Griffone A Home in Brooklyn: Polonsky Shakespeare Center Coordinator, Administration & Theatre for a New Audience’s home, Polonsky Shakespeare Center, is a Humanities|Studio Programming centerpiece of the Brooklyn Cultural District.

Nadiya Atkinson Finance Associate Harmony Fiori Designed by celebrated architect Hugh Hardy, Polonsky Shakespeare Associate to the Founding Artistic Director Center is the first New York City theatre conceived and built for classic Allison Benko drama since Lincoln Center’s 1965 Vivian Beaumont. The 27,500-squareGrants Associate Emmy Ritchey Development Associate Gavin McKenzie foot facility is a uniquely flexible performance space. The 299-seat Samuel Facilities Associate Tim Tyson H. Scripps Mainstage, inspired by the Cottesloe at London’s National Archivist Shannon Resser New Deal Program Coordinator Zhe Pan Theatre, combines an Elizabethan courtyard theatre with modern theatre TFANA Teaching Artists technology. It allows the stage and seating to be reconfigured for each Albert Iturregui-Elias, Elizabeth London, production. The facility also includes the Theodore C. Rogers Studio (a Erin McCready, Kea Trevett, Matthew 50-seat rehearsal/performance studio), and theatrical support spaces. The Dunivan Melanie Goodreaux, City of New York-developed Arts Plaza, designed by landscape architect Margaret Ivey, Marissa Stewart House Managers Ken Smith, creates a natural gathering place around the building. In Regina Pearsall, Adjani Reed, addition, Polonsky Shakespeare Center is also one of the few sustainable Nancy Gill Sanchez (green) theatres in the country, with LEED-NC Silver rating from the Press Representative United States Green Building Council.

Blake Zidell & Associates Resident Director Arin Arbus Now with a home of its own, Theatre for a New Audience is contributing Resident Casting Director Jack Doulin to the continued renaissance of Downtown Brooklyn. In addition to its Resident Dramaturg Jonathan Kalb Resident Distinguished Artist season of plays, the Theatre has expanded its Humanities offerings to John Douglas Thompson include lectures, seminars, workshops, and other activities for artists, Resident Voice and Text Director scholars, and the general public. When not in use by the Theatre, its new Andrew Wade TFANA COUNCIL OF SCHOLARS Tanya Pollard, Chair Jonathan Kalb, Alisa Solomon, Ayanna Thompson

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BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Board Chair Robert E. Buckholz Vice Chair Kathleen C. Walsh President Jeffrey Horowitz Founding Artistic Director Vice President and Secretary Dorothy Ryan Managing Director

Constance Christensen Jeffrey Horowitz Seymour H. Lesser Larry M. Loeb, Esq. Philip R. Rotner Kathleen C. Walsh Josh Weisberg

Members Arin Arbus* John Berendt* Bianca Vivion Brooks* Ben Campbell Robert Caro* Sharon Dunn* Matthew E. Fishbein Riccardo Hernandez* Kathryn Hunter* Dana Ivey* Tom Kirdahy* Harry J. Lennix* Catherine Maciariello* Audrey Heffernan Meyer* Alan Polonsky Dorothy Ryan Joseph Samulski* Doug Steiner Michael Stranahan John Douglas Thompson* John Turturro* Frederick Wiseman* *Artistic Council

Emeritus Francine Ballan Sally Brody William H. Burgess III Caroline Niemczyk Janet C. Olshansky Theodore C. Rogers Mark Rylance* Daryl D. Smith facility is available for rental, bringing much needed affordable performing Susan Stockel and rehearsal space to the community.

Monica G.S. Wambold Jane Wells

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

MA JOR SUPPORTERS

CONTRIBUTORS TO THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE’S ANNUAL FUND September 1, 2022 – January 9, 2024 Even with capacity audiences, ticket sales account for a small portion of our operating costs. Theatre for a New Audience wishes to thank the following donors for their generous support toward our Annual Campaign. For a list of donors $250 and above, go to www.tfana.org/annualdonors.

PRINCIPAL BENEFACTORS

($100,000 and up) Bay and Paul Foundations Bloomberg Philanthropies City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs Constance Christensen Jerome L. Greene Foundation Fund in the New York Community Trust National Endowment for the Humanities The SHS Foundation The Shubert Foundation, Inc. The Thompson Family Foundation, Inc. LEADING BENEFACTORS

($50,000 and up) Robert E. Buckholz and Lizanne Fontaine Deloitte & Touche LLP The Howard Gilman Foundation, Inc. The Whiting Foundation MAJOR BENEFACTORS

($20,000 and up) The Arnow Family Fund The Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation Alan Beller Sally Brody Benton Campbell and Yiba Ng The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation The George Link Jr. Foundation Agnes Gund The Hearst Corporation The DuBose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP Latham & Watkins LLP Patricia McGuire Audrey Heffernan Meyer and Danny Meyer National Endowment for the Arts New York State Council on the Arts New York State Urban Development Corporation The Polonsky Foundation The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust Anne and William Tatlock Kimbrough Towles and George Loening

Kathleen Walsh and Gene Bernstein The White Cedar Fund SUSTAINING BENEFACTORS

($10,000 and up) Anonymous (2) Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP American Express Peggy and Keith Anderson Christine Armstrong and Benjamin Nickoll The Claire Friedlander Family Foundation Ritu and Ajay Banga Jacqueline Bradley and Clarence Otis Dominique Bravo and Eric Sloan Jill and Jay Bernstein Elaine and Norman Brodsky Carlson Family Fund Michele and Martin Cohen Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc Coydog Foundation Debevoise & Plimpton LLP The Ettinger Foundation M. Salome Galib and Duane McLaughlin Ashley Garrett and Alan Jones Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation The Howard Bayne Fund Ingram, Yuzek, Gainen, Carroll, Bertolotti LLP JKW Foundation The J.M. Kaplan Fund King & Spalding LLP Kirkland & Ellis Foundation Anna Kuzmik and George Sampas May and Samuel Rudin Foundation Inc. McDermott Will & Emery Michael Tuch Foundation, Inc. K. Ann McDonald Caroline Niemczyk Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP Estelle Parsons Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP Ponce de Leon Foundation Sarah I. Schieffelin Residuary Trust Kerri Scharlin and Peter Klosowicz Susan Schultz and Thomas Faust Select Equity Group, Inc Sidney E. Frank Foundation.

Daryl and Joy Smith The Speyer Family Foundation

The Starry Night Fund Alice and Thomas Tisch Fran and Barry Weissler

Christine Cumming Katharine and Peter Darrow Sharon Dunn and Harvey Zirofsky Suzan and Fred Ehrman Matt Fishbein and Gail Stone PRODUCERS CIRCLE— Judith and Alan Fishman ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S SOCIETY Heidi and Christopher Flagg ($5,000 and up) Sheryl and Jeffrey Flug Anonymous (1) Foley Hoag LLP Axe-Houghton Foundation Roberta Garza The Bulova Stetson Fund Linda Genereux and Timur Galen Walter Cain and Paulo Ribeiro Aileen Dresner and Frank R. Drury Monica Gerard-Sharp Pamela Givner Jennifer and Steven Eisenstadt Kirsten Feldman and Hugh Frater Lauren Glant and Michael Gillespie Debra Fine and Martin I. Schneider Karoly and Henry Gutman Thomas Healy and Fred P. Hochberg Jenny and Jeff Fleishhacker Sophia Hughes Katherine Goldsmith Irving Harris Foundation Debra Goldsmith Robb The Irwin S. Scherzer Foundation Kathy and Steven Guttman Flora and Christoph Kimmich Michael Haggiag Andrea Knutson Judy and Douglas Hamilton John Koerber Jennifer and Matt Harris Jane Hartley and Ralph Schlosstein Sandy and Eric Krasnoff Sonia and Arvind Krishna Kirsten and Peter Kern Christopher Lawrence Sandy and Eric Krasnoff Taryn and Mark Leavitt Miyoung Lee and Neil Simpkins Justine and John Leguizamo Djena Lennix Patricia and Frank Lenti Anna and Peter Levin Seymour H. Lesser Litowitz Foundation, Inc. Diane and William F. Lloyd Larry and Maria-Luisa Loeb Lucille Lortel Foundation Marta Heflin Foundation Susan Martin and Alan Belzer Ronay and Richard Menschel Nancy Meyer and Marc N. Weiss New York City Council Alessandra and Alan Mnuchin Margaret Nuzum Barbara Forster Moore and Janet C. Olshansky Richard Wraxall Moore Richenthal Foundation Connie and Tom Newberry Pamela Riess Catherine Nyarady and Philip and Janet Rotner Gabriel Riopel Mark and Marie Schwartz Annie Paulsen and Albert Garner Sidley Austin LLP Ellen Petrino Susan Stockel Proskauer Rose LLP Theatre Development Fund Tracey and Robert Pruzan The Venable Foundation Rajika and Anupam Puri Josh and Jackie Weisberg Leslie and David Puth Renee Zarin Heather Randall PRODUCERS CIRCLE—EXECUTIVE Susan and William Rifkin Joseph Samulski ($2,500 and up) Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles Anonymous (5) Robert and Anna Marie Shapiro Deborah Berke and Peter Jeremy T. Smith D. McCann Ellen Sontag-Miller and William Nancy Blachman and C. Miller David desJardins Douglas C. Steiner Hilary Brown and Charles Read Margo and Anthony Viscusi Consulate General of Spain in Gayle and Jay Waxenberg New York Joanne Witty and Eugene Keilin Jane Cooney Dennis M. Corrado

P U B L I C O B S C E N I T I E S 29

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE PRODUCERS CIRCLE—ASSOCIATE

($1,000 and up) Anonymous (3) Elizabeth and Russell Abbott Actors’ Equity Foundation Ann Ash Jackie and Jacob Baskin Elizabeth Bass M.J. and James Berrien Cece and Lee Black Mary Bockelmann Norris and Floyd Norris Lani and Dave Bonifacic Penny Brandt Jackson and Thomas Campbell Jackson Christina and John Bransfield Pamela Brier and Peter Aschkenasy Deborah Buell and Charles Henry Janel Callon Joan and Robert Catell Gerard Conn and Carol Yorke Ron Chernow Joel Conarroe Larry Condon Susan Cowie Sara Debolt Ian Dickson and Reg Holloway Jodie and Jonathan Donnellan Frederick Eberstadt Noah Eisenberg Ev and Lee Steven Feinsilver Roxanne Frank Herman Giddings Virginia Gliedman Joyce Gordon and Paul Lubetkin The Grace R. and Alan D. Marcus Foundation Anne and Paul Grand Alba Greco-Garcia and Roger Garcia Kathleen and Harvey Guion David Harms Grace Harvey

Vicki and Ronald Hauben Laura and Robert Hoguet Donald Holder Maxine Isaacs Miriam Katowitz and Arthur Radin Helen Kauder and Barry Nalebuff Debra Kaye and Steven Horowitz Nora Wren Kerr and John J. Kerr Parker L. Krasney and Allison C. McCullough Susan Kurz Snyder Julius Leiman-Carbia Dedee and Steve Lovell Margaret Lundin Kathleen Maurer Chandru Murthi Marie Nugent-Head and James Marlas Mimi Oka and Jun Makihara Annie Parisse and Paul Sparks Lori and Lee Parks Doris and Martin Payson Margaret and Carl Pfeiffer Susie Polsky Dale Ponikvar Anne Prost and Olivier Robert Carol and Michael Reimers Susan and Peter Restler David A.J. Richards Enid and Paul I. Rosenberg Daryl and Steven Roth Dorothy Ryan and John Leitch Deborah Scharf and A. Ross Hill Stacy Schiff and Marc de la Bruyere Sandra and Steven Schoenbart Cynthia and Thomas Sculco Avi Sharon and Megan Hertzig Sharon Loren Skeist and Marlene Marko Susan Sommer and Stephen A. Warnke The Bernard and Anne Spitzer Charitable Trust

MA JOR SUPPORTERS

Lauren and Jay Springer Wendy and Tom Stephenson Barbara Stimmel Julie Taymor Roger Tilles Donna Zaccaro Ullman and Paul A. Ullman Cynthia King Vance and Lee Vance Elena and Louis Werner Abby Westlake Debra Winger Devera and Michael Witkin Evan D. Yionoulis and Donald Holder Andrew Young Nancy Young and Paul Ford IN HONOR OF

In honor of Georgette Bennett & Leonard Polonsky and Liz &Joshua Tanenbaum Marion and Daniel Goldberg In honor of Leonard Polonsky birthday Robert Lewis In honor of Sally Brody Ann Ash Sophie McConnell Nancy B. Pearsall In honor of Robert E. Buckholz Martha and Stephen Dietz Jennifer and Steven Eisenstadt In honor of Connie Christensen Nancy Rosenberg and David Sternlieb

In honor of Ned Eisenberg Anonymous In honor of Audrey Heffernan Meyer Ritu and Ajay Banga Sheryl and Jeff Flug Thomas Healy and

Fred P. Hochberg Cynthia King Vance Agnes Gund In honor of Susan Martin and Alan Belzer Dale L. Ponikvar In honor of Caroline Niemczyk Silda Spitzer and Erik Stangvik In memory of Steven Jackson Popkin Susan Kurz Snyder In honor of Ted Rogers Janet Olshansky In honor of Kathy Walsh Natalie and Matthew Bernstein Dave and Lani Bonifacic Wendy and Jeff Maurer Bruce Meltzer In honor of Kathy Walsh and Gene Bernstein Christina and Jack Bransfield Michele and Martin Cohen Christine and Alan Vickery Jennifer and James Wilent In memory of Michael Zarin Renee Zarin

In honor of Fred Eberstadt Linell Smith and Dr. Tom Hall

MATCHING GIFTS The following companies have contributed through their Matching Gift Programs: If your employer has a matching gift program, please consider making a contribution to Theatre for a New Audience and making your gift go further by participating in your employer’s matching gift program.

BlackRock, Inc. Goldman Sachs & Co. Matching Gift Foundation

Google International Business Machines JPMorgan Chase Foundation

Omidyar Group Related Companies TIFF Advisory Services

PUBLIC FUNDS Theatre for a New Audience’s productions and education programs are made possible, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts; Shakespeare in American Communities, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

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T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

MA JOR SUPPORTERS

SHAKESPEARE WORKS IN BROOKLYN: CULTURE, COMMUNITY, CAPITAL Theatre for a New Audience recognizes with gratitude the following donors to Theatre for a New Audience’s Capital Campaign to support ambitious programming, access to affordable tickets and financial resiliency.

Named funds within the Capital Campaign include the Henry Christensen III Artistic Opportunity Fund, the Audrey H. Meyer New Deal Fund and the Merle Debuskey Studio Fund. Other opportunities include the Completing Shakespeare’s Canon Fund, Capital Reserves funds and support for the design and construction of New Office and Studio Spaces.

To learn more, or to make a gift to the Capital Campaign, please contact George Brennan at gbrennan@tfana.org or by calling 646-553-3893.

$1,000,000 AND ABOVE

Mr.◊ and Mrs. Henry Christensen III Ford Foundation The Howard Gilman Foundation New York City Department of Cultural Affairs The Thompson Family Foundation $250,000-$999,999 Booth Ferris Foundation Robert E. Buckholz and Lizanne Fonatine Merle Debuskey◊ Irving Harris Foundation The Stairway Fund, Audrey Heffernan Meyer and Danny Meyer The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Kathleen Walsh and Gene Bernstein $100,000–$249,999 Alan Jones and Ashley Garrett Carol Sutton Lewis and William M. Lewis, Jr. Seymour H. Lesser The Polonsky Foundation Charlene Magen Weinstein◊ $50,000–$99,999 Bloomberg Philanthropies Aileen and Frank Drury Agnes Gund The Dubose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund New York State Council on the Arts Abby Pogrebin and David Shapiro John and Regina Scully Foundation Marcia T. Thompson◊

$20,000–$49,999 Peggy and Keith Anderson Elaine and Norman Brodsky Kathy and Steve Guttman Rita & Alex Hillman Foundation Cynthia and Robert Schaffner Kerri Scharlin and Peter Klosowicz Daryl and Joy Smith Susan Stockel Anne and William Tatlock Earl D. Weiner $10,000–$19,999 Diana Bergquist Sally R. Brody New York State Energy Research and Development Authority Linda and Jay Lapin Janet Wallach and Robert Menschel◊ Alessandra and Alan Mnuchin Anne Prost and Robert Olivier Allison and Neil Rubler Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Jackie and Josh Weisberg

Jane Garnett and David Booth Penny Brandt Jackson and Thomas Jackson Miriam Katowitz and Arthur Radin Mary and Howard Kelberg Kirsten and Peter Kern Susan Litowitz Ronay and Richard Menschel Ann and Conrad Plimpton Priham Trust/The Green Family Alejandro Santo Domingo Marie and Mark Schwartz Cynthia and Thomas Sculco Nancy Meyer and Marc N. Weiss ◊deceased

$5,000–$9,999 Alan Beller Katharine and Peter Darrow Bipin and Linda Doshi Marcus Doshi Downtown Brooklyn Partnership Susan Schultz and Thomas Faust Barbara G. Fleischman

THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES A Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) established a Humanities endowment fund at Theatre for a New Audience to support in perpetuity the 360° Series: Viewfinders as well as the TFANA Council of Scholars and the free TFANA Talks series. Leading matching gifts to the NEH grant were provided by Joan and Robert Arnow, Norman and Elaine Brodsky, The Durst Organization, Perry and Marty Granoff, Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia, John J. Kerr & Nora Wren Kerr, Litowitz Foundation, Inc., Robert and Wendy MacDonald, Sandy and Stephen Perlbinder, The Prospect Hill Foundation, Inc., Theodore C. Rogers, and from purchasers in the Theatre’s Seat for Shakespeare Campaign, 2013 – 2015.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Viewfinder or the Theatre’s Humanities programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

P U B L I C O B S C E N I T I E S 31

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