Can a story about a group of 8th century nuns living in rural Italy entertain and provoke contemporary audiences?
Playwright Miranda Rose Hall, finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, thinks so—and Shayok Misha Chowdhury '16 is directing the world premiere of her original play, Work of Devotion, for Second Stage in February 2027 at the Pershing Square Signature Center.
When their leader dies in a freak accident, the nuns must ask themselves: How do we actually want to live? The resulting story chronicles a life devoted to beauty, wonder, and the glorious absurdity of being alive.
A many-tentacled Obie- and Whiting Award-winning writer-director, Chowdhury's portfolio defies genre in his sometimes realistic, sometimes otherworldly depictions of queer South Asian experience. His playwriting debut, Public Obscenities, one of three finalists for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize, was a New York Times Critic's Pick and hailed as "a literary marvel" in The New Yorker's Best Theatre of 2023. Helen Shaw, for the magazine, called his "bilingual text and production gorgeously precise."
Chowdhury directed the play's world premiere at Soho Rep, a co-production with NAATCO, as well as transfers to Woolly Mammoth and Theatre for a New Audience. Collaborative original projects include Speech (2022 Philadelphia Fringe Fest), MukhAgni (The Public Theater’s 2020 Under the Radar Festival), and Brother, Brother (director, New York Theatre Workshop, 2021). He is the recipient of a Princess Grace Award, the Mark O'Donnell Prize, Drama Desk and Drama League nominations, a Jonathan Larson Grant, and the 2022 Relentless Award for his musical How the White Girl Got Her Spots and Other 90s Trivia, created with composer Laura Grill Jaye. Chowdhury is currently working on commissions from Playwrights Horizons and Manhattan Theatre Club and developing Rheology, a collaboration with his physicist mother, for which he was awarded an inaugural Sundance Asian American Fellowship.
Learn more about Work of Devotion—and stay tuned for tickets—here.
