What: TFANA hosts Soho Rep and NAATCO National Partnership Project's production of Shayok Misha Chowdhury's play about Choton, a queer studies PhD student who, with his boyfriend, travels to his family home in Kolkata, India to research the queer Bengal community in the wake of the repeal of anti-sodomy and anti-homosexual laws.
And? I loved it. This is the rare play that lets itself breathe (yes, it's a little over three hours but it's worth it), that lets its characters exist in both the quiet and noisy ends of the spectrums of memory, introspection, loneliness, and the urge for connection. A major motif in the play is the power and permanence of photographs: not only the large and gloomy photograph of Choton's grandfather, who stands guard over the house, but the recently-discovered and revealing photographs taken just days before his death. Once a person dies, there will never be any more new photos taken of them; this is all we get. But there's power in the discovery of photos unknown, showing a side long hidden. And these photographs, these films, these voice memos, these attempts by Choton and Raheem to document the ephemeral, they give us something, but they also never quite capture all we remember of the moment--including, perhaps especially, the one documenting them: the one behind the camera. This play is such a gift; I'm glad I didn't miss it.
 |
| Abra Haque, Debashis Roy Chowdhury, and Jakeem Dante Powell as Choton, Pishe, and Raheem. Photo by Hollis King. |
2/15/24: The Seven Year Disappear
What: The New Group presents a new play by Jordan Seavey: a two-hander metatheatrical nonlinear look at a complicated mother-son relationship and the damage caused when the experimental artist mother disappears for seven years on the brink of her MoMA commission.
And? A really interesting line of tension in the voyeuristic excavation of Naphtali's trauma after his abandonment at the hands of his mother and business partner. I think, even at the end, I don't forgive her; I don't think we're meant to. It's too little too late, and in having Cynthia Nixon's character play everyone else her son meets, even if she thinks she's atoning, it's still all about her. But yeah, it's very good multimedia theater.
2/17/24: Prayer for the French Republic
What: The Broadway transfer of Joshua Harmon's powerful play about the crisis of being Jewish in France, both during the Holocaust and on the cusp of the 2016 elections.
And? Still extraordinary, powerful and emotional. I really wish more of my gentile friends would go see this production before it closes in a few weeks, just to get some understanding of what we're going through, have been going through. I said some pretty eloquent stuff the first time I saw it, so hyperlinking to that here.
 |
| Molly Ranson, Nael Nacer, and Aria Shahghasemi as Molly, Charles, and Daniel. Photo by Jeremy Daniel. |
No comments:
Post a Comment