RHEOLOGY To Make West Coast Premiere At Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater

Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT), CalArts’ center for contemporary arts in downtown Los Angeles will present RHEOLOGY by Obie and Whiting Award-winning writer and director Shayok Misha Chowdhury on June 11-13, 2026. The production is presented by The Bushwick Starr, HERE Arts Center, and Ma-Yi Theater Company.

RHEOLOGY is a 75-minute meditation on love, loss, and vocation that considers what is experimental about experimental theater. In the piece, playwright Shayok Misha Chowdhury and his mother, physicist Bulbul Chakraborty, explore rheology—the study of how matter moves—both as a scientific concept and as theatrical framework. The piece begins with Chakraborty delivering a lecture about the physics of sand—based on talks she has given for decades—before moving into more theatrical and personal passages. At its heart, the play explores Chowdhury's fear of his mother's death and the finite time they have left together. The show incorporates family recordings, and features performances of Rabindra Sangeet (songs by Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore). Rather than simply being about his mother, Chowdhury collaborates with her to create what he calls "a new kind of theatre" that takes the dramaturgy of her scientific research seriously, treating the work as a theatrical experiment that tests whether he can imagine life without her.

"RHEOLOGY presents a unique opportunity to experience Chowdhury's strength as director, writer, and performer in an intimate meditation on mortality and experimentation. One of the most important artists working in theater today--it's a joy to be able to bring his piece to REDCAT for its West Coast premiere," said Katy Dammers, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Performing Arts.

Presented in English and Bengali with English supertitles. Please note: This program contains flashing lights, mature content, and themes of death.

Ticketing information for this event: $27 for General admission. $22 for REDCAT members and students. $14 for CalArts students, faculty and staff. Tickets can be reserved at the REDCAT website.

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).

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.

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