Award-winning playwright and director Shayok Misha Chowdhury will spend a week as an artist in residence at PEM, developing his new play RHEOLOGY. This work is a performance memoir created with Chowdhury’s mother, the physicist Bulbul Chakraborty. Her specialty is rheology, the laws governing the malleability and movement of matter under force.

Hear excerpts from the play, then participate in a short Q&A hosted by Estelle Rand, PEM's Public Programming Manager. A light reception will follow.

RHEOLOGY will have its world premiere at the Bushwick Starr in Brooklyn in May 2025.

PEM Presents seeks to surprise and delight audiences with world-class artistry in music, theater, dance, film and more. This series allows audiences to learn about the artistic process and supports the development of artists with local, regional, national and global perspectives. PEM Presents further activates the museum as a global center for art, culture and creativity with artist residencies, live performances, lecture series, symposia and conferences. PEM Presents is a collaboration between Learning and Community Engagement and the Present Tense initiative.

PEM Presents is made possible by The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation and the Lowell Institute.

About our Collaborator

Shayok Misha Chowdhury was born in India and is now based in Brooklyn. He recently received an Obie Award for directing the world premiere of his playwriting debut, Public Obscenities, at Soho Rep, a co-production with the National Asian American Theatre Company. The “extraordinary bilingual drama” was a New York Times Critic's Pick and hailed as a “literary marvel” and “complexly layered masterwork” by the New Yorker. The play had encore runs at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and Theatre for a New Audience. Chowdhury is also the recipient of a Princess Grace Award, The Mark O’Donnell Prize, Drama Desk and Drama League nominations and a Jonathan Larson Grant for his body of work writing musicals with composer Laura Grill Jaye.