RHEOLOGY

Shayok Misha Chowdhury

WEST COAST PREMIERE

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Price: $27*
Genre: Theater
Season: Winter/Spring 2026
DATE: JUN 11-13
TIME: THU-SAT, 8 PM
RUNTIME: Approx. 75 minutes, no intermission
COUNTRY: USA
PROGRAM: Not yet available

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About

The Bushwick Starr, HERE Arts Center and Ma-Yi Theater Company Production of RHEOLOGY

In RHEOLOGY Obie Winner Shayok Misha Chowdhury joins forces with his physicist mother, Bulbul Chakraborty. Bulbul is obsessed with the physics 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 collaboration, mother and son challenge each other to a high-stakes experiment.

Presented in English and Bengali with English supertitles.

Please note: This program contains flashing lights, mature content, and themes of death.

RHEOLOGY by Shayok Misha Chowdhury in collaboration with Bulbul Chakraborty was originally commissioned and developed by The Bushwick Starr and HERE Arts Center, and was originally co-produced by The Bushwick Starr, HERE Arts Center, and Ma-Yi Theater Company as part of their 2024-25 Season.

RHEOLOGY is made with support from: New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), an individual commission from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), National Endowment for the Arts, National Science Foundation, the Division of Condensed Matter Physics and the Division of Soft Matter Physics of the American Physical Society, and Society for Arts and Culture of South Asia (SACSA).

RHEOLOGY was commissioned and developed through the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) and has received additional development through residencies at Mercury Store, Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, NY and through concerts at Little Island and Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City. RHEOLOGY was developed in part with a residency at the Peabody Essex Museum (pem.org).

RHEOLOGY was awarded an inaugural Sundance Asian American Fellowship.

RHEOLOGY has been supported by the following generous donors:

American Physical Society; Jean-Philippe Bouchard; Supriyo Datta; Bhaskar Ghosh; Yasheng Yang

Sue Behringer, Dapeng Bi, Sharmila and Aloke Chakravarty; Susan Coppersmith; Ishita Dasgupta; Carol Fierke; Lizbeth Hedstrom; Maria Marchetti; Eve Marder; Merk Company Foundation; Tao Wu

Arup Chakraborty; Shaati Chattopadhyay; Zahera Jabeen; Jané Kondev; Aditya Sood; Leander Mengpan Wu

Guatam and Jayanti Bandyopadhyay; Bernadette Brooten; Ruth Charney; Chandan Dasgupta; Zvonimir Dogic; Irving Epstein; Heather Felton; Harvey Gould; Pengyu Hong; Sarah Lamb; Nidhiya Menon; Kasturi Purkayastha; Shyamal Roy; Suresh Subramani; Kushal Talukdar; Aida Wong; Elaine Wong

about the artists

Shayok Misha Chowdhury (Writer, Director, Performer) is an Obie and Whiting Award-winning writer and director. His bilingual play Public Obscenities (Soho Rep, NAATCO, Woolly Mammoth, TFANA) was one of three finalists for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, a New York Times Critic’s Pick, and named Best Theater of 2023 by The New Yorker. Misha is 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. Other favorite collabs: MukhAgni (Under the Radar) with Kameron Neal; Brother, Brother (New York Theatre Workshop) with Aleshea Harris; SPEECH (Philly Fringe) with Lightning Rod Special. Misha also collaborated on the Grammy-winning album Calling All Dawns. A two-time Sundance Fellow, Misha is the creator of VICHITRA, a series of short experimental films. A Fulbright and Kundiman fellow, his poetry has been published in The Cincinnati Review, TriQuarterly, Asian American Literary Review and elsewhere. Up next: Jordan Tannahill’s Prince Faggot (Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep) and a revival of Gospel at Colonus (Little Island).

Instagram / Website

Bulbul Chakraborty (Performer, Collaborator) is a theoretical physicist, recognized for her contributions to soft condensed matter theory, studying systems far from equilibrium, such as granular materials, amorphous systems, and statistical physics. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a recipient of a Simons Fellowship. Born in India, Chakraborty also grew up singing Rabindrasangeet: Bengali writer-composer Rabindranath Tagore’s repertoire of songs about the natural world. She has performed in concert with Misha at Lincoln Center and Little Island. An alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, Chakraborty immigrated to the US in 1974 to get her PhD from Stonybrook. She was the first tenured woman physicist at Brandeis University, where she is the Ancell Professor of Physics and former Head of the Division of Science. You are likely to find her singing loudly in her office.

cast & creative team

Written and Directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury

In collaboration with Bulbul Chakraborty

Featuring: Shayok Misha Chowdhury, Bulbul Chakraborty, George Crotty (musician)

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