Public Obscenities

Bengali-American Ph.D. student Choton, who speaks both English and Bangla, is visiting Kolkata with his African American boyfriend Raheem to film a "queer archiving project".^[3][4][5][6]

The production first premiered Off-Broadway at Soho Rep^[7] on February 28, 2023, running through April 16, 2023 after multiple extensions. The show starred Abrar Haque as Choton, Dante Powell as Raheem, Gargi Mukherjee as Pishimoni, Debashis Roy Chowdhury as Pishe, Golam Sarwar Harun as Jitesh, trans activist Tashnuva Anan as Shou and NaFis as Sebanti. Chowdhury also directed the production.

The production received critical acclaim, with The New York Times lauding the "uniformly excellent cast and the deliberate pacing of a confident playwright," naming the production a Critic's Pick.^[8] The New Yorker praised the show as "extraordinary" and a "triumph".^[9]

For the play, Chowdhury was nominated for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Drama League Award for Outstanding Direction of a Play,^[10][11][12] and won an Obie Award for direction.^[13] The production received five 2023 Drama Desk Award nominations, with the cast winning the 2023 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble.^[14]

In 2024, the production was revived Off-Broadway at Theatre for a New Audience with the same cast and Chowdhury again as director,^[15] along with a run at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. in 2023 from November 14 to December 23.^[16]

• Satyajit Ray – discussed in the play as part of the Bengali neorealist movement