Public Obscenities

It is a testament to Shayok Misha Chowdhury's gifts as a writer that he is able to evoke as many themes, histories and possibilities as he does in Public Obscenities and leave his audience not dazed or frustrated, but longing for even more...Chowdhury is a writer with great promise who, with Public Obscenities, may have found himself on the brink of greatness. --Juan A. Ramírez, New York Times An absolute stunner. --The Wrap A stately, naturalistic, complexly layered masterwork...As a writer, Chowdhury interweaves humor, allusion, gravity, and extended metaphor as if each quality were a musical line, making an integrated, symphonic whole. --Helen Shaw, New Yorker One can walk away from Public Obscenities having experienced it not as a story but as the everyday texture of the characters' lives, and the thick tapestry of themes that Chowdhury weaves around them--about the difficulty of communicating and of love, about the struggles to overcome strictures of caste and gender and sexuality, about memory and loss, longing and belonging. --New York Theater Gripping and enthralling...Through the act of filmmaking, the play asks the viewer to interrogate their relationships between what is hidden and what is shown, the lens with which we view ourselves and our families, and how the act of translation can bring us together, even as they seemingly keep us apart. --Anjor Khadilkar, Asian American Arts Alliance In this meticulously rendered middle-class Bengali home, the characters of Public Obscenities won't howl and grandstand. They won't soliloquize or strut or be shattered by a devastating third-act reveal. They will simply live. The play's great poignancy lies in its restraint, in the moments that could lead to shouting and instead lead to silence and space, the insufficiency--especially in a world of constant translation--of language. --Sara Holdren, Vulture