The Bushwick Starr to Present World Premiere of Shayok Misha Chowdhury's RHEOLOGY

The Bushwick Starr is partnering with HERE Arts Center and Ma-Yi Theater Company to present the world premiere of Rheology, written and directed by Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie Award winner Shayok Misha Chowdhury (Public Obscenities at Soho Rep, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and Theatre for a New Audience).

In Rheology, Misha joins forces with his physicist mother, Bulbul Chakraborty. Bulbul is obsessed with the mystery of sand: how it flows, like a liquid, but then jams into a solid. Misha is obsessed with his mother. But they're running out of time. In this boundary-pushing new collaboration, an artist son challenges his scientist mother to a high-stakes experiment. 

The show runs from April 15 - May 5, 2025 at The Bushwick Starr 419 Eldert Street, Brooklyn. Previews are April 15-18, with the official opening on April 19. Performances are Tuesdays - Saturdays at 7:30pm.

Creative team: Set Design: Krit Robinson, Costume Design: Enver Chakartash, Lighting Design: Mextly Couzin and Masha Tsimring, Sound Design: Tei Blow, Video Design: Kameron Neal, Music Director and Cello: George Crotty, Stage Manager: Lisa McGinn, Dramaturg: Sarah Lunnie, Associate Director: Kedian Keohan, Associate Direction/Additional Dramaturgy: Lindsay Tanner, Associate Dramaturg: Harris Kiernan, Associate Costume Designer: Miriam Cortes, Assistant Scenic Designer: Gabby Nunez, Associate Sound Designer: Ryan Gamblin, Associate Video Designer: Hannah Tran, Props Manager: Samantha Tutasi Line Producer: Kate Bussert

About Shayok Misha Chowdhury

Shayok Misha Chowdhury is an Obie Award winning director and Whiting Award winning writer. His playwriting debut, Public Obscenities, was one of three finalists for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. The bilingual play, in Bangla and English, was a New York Times Critic's Pick and named Best Theater of 2023 by the New Yorker. It premiered at Soho Rep as a co-production with the National Asian American Theatre Company and went on to encore runs at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and Theatre for a New Audience.

Misha is also the recipient of a USA Fellowship, a Princess Grace Award, The Mark O’Donnell Prize, Drama Desk and Drama League nominations, a Jonathan Larson Grant, and the Relentless Award for his musical How the White Girl Got Her Spots and Other 90s Trivia, a collaboration with composer Laura Grill Jaye. Other recent collaborations include Brother, Brother (New York Theatre Workshop) with Aleshea Harris, SPEECH (Philly Fringe) with Lightning Rod Special, and MukhAgni (Under the Radar @ The Public Theater) with Kameron Neal. This spring, he will be directing directing Jordan Tannahill’s Prince Faggot (Playwrights Horizons & Soho Rep)

Misha was a collaborator on the Grammy Award winning album Calling All Dawns. A two-time Sundance Fellow, he is the creator of VICHITRA, a series of short films rooted in queer South Asian imagination. Misha is also an alumnus of New York Theatre Workshop’s 2050 Fellowship, The Public Theater’s Devised Theater Working Group, Ars Nova’s Makers Lab, New York Stage and Film Nexus, the Sundance Art of Practice Fellowship, BRIClab, Drama League’s Next Stage Residency, and Soho Rep’s Project Number One and Writer Director Lab. A Kundiman, Fulbright, and NYSCA/NYFA fellow, his poems have been published in The Cincinnati Review, TriQuarterly, Hunger Mountain, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Asian American Literary Review, and elsewhere.

Misha received his Bachelors in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity under the mentorship of Maestra Cherríe Moraga at Stanford University, his Master of Fine Arts in Directing Theater at Columbia University under Anne Bogart, Brian Kulick, and Greg Mosher, and studied Lecoq-based physical theater at the London International School of Performing Arts. He has taught and directed at Stanford, Brown, NYU, CalArts, Fordham, Syracuse, UArts, Hunter College, CMU, and Williams.

Photo credit: Dyuti Majumdar