Why You Need to See Soho Rep’s ‘Public Obscenities’ While You Still Can

By Ethan Katz

In March of 2023, I had the privilege of seeing Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s incredible play Public Obscenities at Soho Rep in New York. Public Obscenities is a bilingual Bangla and American play that centers around Choton, a Bengali-American PhD. student, and his boyfriend, Raheem, who is a cinematographer, as they visit Choton’s family in his grandfather’s house in Kolkata, India. It’s quickly revealed that Choton and Raheem are visiting Kolkata for an academic project focusing on queerness and sex — in order to begin conducting interviews, they set up a joint Grindr account. While visiting, however, Choton and his family unearth an old camera — and upon developing the film, discover previously unseen intimate photographs of his grandfather. In that sense, perhaps most significantly, Public Obscenities explores the concept of public and private — both through the interviews that Choton and Raheem conduct, and through the conversations and discoveries that they make with Choton’s family.

The portrayal of queerness, gender identity, and queer love in Public Obscenities is really beautiful. The most obvious example of this is Choton and Raheem’s relationship. Choton’s family quickly accepts Raheem as one of their own. By the end of the play, when Choton and Raheem leave to go back to America, Pishimoni (Chonton’s aunt) insists that Raheem take the camera home with him, since he had been using it the whole trip. But Raheem refuses, saying he’ll just have to come back, to which Pishimoni responds “Yes please come again. This is your home.” In that way, I really loved the way the play portrayed their relationship as both domestic and exciting and filled with adventure. Another really lovely aspect of queerness that was spotlighted was queer gender identity in Kolkata. One character that is introduced as an interviewee is Shou, who identifies as kothi — meaning a very feminine gay man who takes on the traditionally feminine role in relationships. By the end of the play, audiences and readers are also introduced to Shou’s friend Sebanti, a trans woman who briefly relates to the audience some of her experiences as a trans woman in Kolkata.

From the moment I walked into the theater, the set transported me to the intimate apartment where the vast majority of the play takes place. The play was slow-going, a perfect pace for an almost three hour endeavor with so much information it’s nearly impossible to cover it all. Yet at no point did I feel overwhelmed with the amount of information. I was also really impressed by the way Chowdhury managed to successfully write and direct a bilingual play that left me feeling like I understood almost everything that was happening. During some particularly dense moments of dialogue in Bangla, there were supertitles projected on the stage — but there were also many untranslated lines that both added to the play while also not leaving any audience members in the dust. I think it was helpful to have a character like Raheem, who also didn’t speak Bangla, to justify some spoken translation and to make everyone watching feel a bit more comfortable with any confusion due to the language barrier.

Ultimately, Public Obscenities was neither particularly public nor obscene. Most of the play takes place within the small apartment, and the scenes that do not take place there somehow felt even more private. And the show might not be ideal to take a seven-year-old to, but it was far from anything particularly “obscene.” Original, interesting, complicated queer stories are the most exciting ones — and I’m so thankful to have had the ability to see this fantastically original, interesting, complicated, queer play while it was running at Soho Rep.

Public Obscenities is currently running at Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn, New York, until February 18th, and the script is also currently available for purchase.

About the Author:

Ethan Katz is second year at Oberlin College in Oberlin, OH, where he is studying creative writing & theater. He is grateful to have been introduced to the opportunity to write for Matthew’s Place through the Be a Friend Project.