From a beautiful little story that gives an insight into Ramunujan's peculiar genius:
"Once, in the taxi from London, Hardy noticed its number, 1729. He must have thought about it a little because he entered the room where Ramanujan lay in bed and, with scarcely a hello, blurted out his disappointment with it. It was, he declared, 'rather a dull number,' adding that he hoped that wasn't a bad omen. 'No, Hardy,' said Ramanujan, 'it is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two [positive] cubes in two different ways"' (Hofstadter 1989, Kanigel 1991, Snow 1993; Hardy 1999, pp. 13 and 68).
October 2006 theater season: A First Class Man by David Freeman
Exciting news ahead! Alter Ego Productions has decided to shake off the cobwebs and emerge with renewed vigour (Old English), to present Off-Off Broadway with their production of David Freeman's A First Class Man, this fall beginning, the 5th of October to the 21st of October, 2006 at the 45th Street theater. Keep tuned!
Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920)
A First Class Man is the story of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a shipping clerk living in India in the early 20th century, possessing an innate genius and a full time passion for producing complex mathematical theorems and equations, without any formal training in mathematics. Quixotic fraud?? Not according to the eminent British mathematician and Cambridge don, GH Hardy, who recognizes Ramanujan's talent and wants him to come over to Cambridge. One problem: Ramanujan's religious beliefs forbids him to travel overseas.
A First Class Man explores the complex and dysfunctional relationship between a Cambridge educated don steeped in the precise world of mathematics, whose scientific orthodoxy clashes with Ramanujam's more intuitive and spiritual relationship with numbers. In the end, eventually, we discover that even the stripped down and sequestered world of mathematics and academia, cannot keep apart human frailties and cultural differences.
ALTER EGO is a non-profit group focusing on cutting-edge modern Indo-American Theater with a universal message. Alter Ego is unique to other theater companies as it is a team of talented New York professionals with a corporate identity by day that use "Alter Ego" as a platform to moonlight as theater artists to express their artistic vision.
Founding members
Bhavna Thakur
Bhavna is the founder and artistic director of Alter Ego Productions. A securities and mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison she has a LLM from Columbia University School of Law and a J.D. from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore.
Theatre Experience: Acted as Martha in Joseph Kesserling's Arsenic and Old Lace, Hortense in Maxwell Anderson's Bad Seed, Hattie in Peter Coke's Breath of Spring, the Countess in Woody Allen's Don't Drink the Water and participated in various inter and intra school play festivals. While at college, acted in Mahesh Dattani's Where there is a Will and was involved in various workshops and productions with him. Directed Peter Brook's Mahabharata, Jean Anouilh's Antigone and Terence McNally's A Perfect Ganesh in Bangalore. Acted in and directed various college plays like Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit (Madame Arcati), Joyce Carol Oates's Eclipse (Mother), Ayn Rand's Night of January the 16th (Miss Svenson) and various productions of street theater for the Legal Education through Theater Enterprise. Acted as Sunita in Anuvab Pal's Chaos Theory and directed Girish Karnad's Hayavadana and Anuvab Pal's Chaos Theory for Alter Ego Productions.
Nilay Oza
After completing a Masters in Building Technology from M.I.T, Nilay began working for James Carpenter Design with a design focus on structural glass. He recently completed work on AOL Time Warner Development on Columbus Circle. His theater experience includes set design for both stage productions and collapsible structures for the traveling street theater troupe for the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust in India. He currently works for the Brown Group of Companies, a prominent real estate development company, developing high end houses built by prominent architects, for wealthy clients.
Producers for Alter Ego's 2006 play, " A First Class Man' by David Freeman
Puja Ogale
Puja has been a member of Alter Ego for three years and worked on props for Chaos Theory, as Stage Manager on Indian Wants the Bronx, and as Assistant Producer on Indian Ink and Fatwa. She enjoys both production and acting. Her educational background is in Communications and Business and she currently works in marketing for Apple Core Hotels in New York.
Seema Malik
Seema is an architect at Robert A.M. Stern, New York. She recently received her Masters in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University. She has been a part of AlterEgo Productions for the last three years. She has worked in the capacity of a set designer for "Indian Ink", production manager for "Fatwa", and acted in "Whose Afraid of Vijay Tendulkar?" This time round she has decided to add to her theatrical repertoire by co-producing AlterEgo’s latest venture, “A First Class Man.”
Prashant Vijay
By day, Prashant Vijay works at Goldman Sachs in Technology for the Commodities Trading Desk. His night-time alter-ego "Vijay Prashant" has been a part of Alter-Ego productions since 2002. He has acted in Chaos Theory by Anuvab Pal in 2002 and in Indian Ink by Tom Stoppard in 2003. He has been involved in various roles in the productions of both those plays, as well as Fatwa by Anuvab Pal, in 2004. He attended Modern School in New Delhi, and was a part of many productions there. He graduated from Tulane University in 2001, with a degree in Computer Science.
Alter Ego members
Reshma Patel
Reshma is a life-long left brainer, graduated from MIT and is a Managing Director at Bear Stearns. After moving to New York, she discovered an interest in the arts and has been with Alter Ego since its formation. For Indian Ink, she was assistant stage manager and helped with fundraising. She helped with publicity for both Indian Ink and Fatwa. She dabbled as a costume designer for Chaos Theory.
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Akshay Damarla
Akshay is a Computer Programmer at Bloomberg Financial Markets by day who likes to maximize his time outside of work experiencing the diverse culture unique only to the City of New York. This is his second tryst with Alter Ego
and one of many more exciting ones to follow.
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Saad Tabani
Saad is an underemployed actor and percussionist. Facing limited career growth prospects as (the real-life) Spider- Man he began pursuing an MBA at NYU's Stern School of Business. He juggles that with a day job at IBM Software. Saad is involved with AlterEgo to get exposure and experience with theater. He plans to use that to bring Spider-Man to Broadway.
Tarika Daftary
Tarika is currently working on her doctorate in Forensic Psychology from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and teaching undergraduate psychology classes. She has acted and worked on sets in a few high school productions, and this is her first year with Alter Ego.
Beatrice Ramnarine
Beatrice Ramnarine is an Interior Design Graduate from Parsons School of Design and is currently working for Houses at Sagaponac, a residential development of the Brown Companies. A strong interest in Costume and Set
Design has jump started her involvement with Alter Ego Productions. This is her first theatre production.
Mitun Sinha
Mitun Sinha joined Alter Ego after being invited to have a one-second role strumming a tune in Chaos Theory. He works at Goldman Sachs on the Global Derivatives technology team, and moonlights as a guitarist and sound
designer in the greatest band ever ..imagined
Ashwin Gonibeed
A native of Madras, Ashwin grew up being greatly influenced by two icons of the 20th century - Rajnikanth and Hugh Hefner. In high school, he indulged his passion for theatre by playing critically acclaimed roles such as -
third guy from the right in a scene from Othello. As he got out of college and joined the work-force he began contemplating on the meaning of life. He gave up on this endeavor after joining Alter Ego - when he finally got a
life. In the past, he has played numerous pivotal roles in the organization such as publicity as well as other production related work. A trained Hindustani vocalist, Ashwin has also performed publicly at the Indian
Consulate in NY and Union Square park. Currently Ashwin works at T-Mobile.
"The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended...As soon as you accept this, I mean really accept this, for some reason your career starts moving ahead faster. I don't know why this happens. It's the people who refuse to cleave their lives this way- who just want to start Day One by quitting their current crappy day job and moving straight on over to best-selling author... Well, they never make it. "
Playwright: Anuvab Pal
Director: Michael Barakiva
Producer: Nilay Oza
Stage Manager: Christine Lemme
Set Designer: Shoko Kambara
Lighting Designer: Nick Francone
Actors:
Joe Jamrog - Michael Jordan
Jerry Matz - Mohammed Ali
Fatwa, by Anuvab Pal, is a comedy about blasphemy.
Michael Jordan and Mohammed Ali, are not the famous ones. They are failed writers, almost dead and ready for obscurity. As a last effort, Michael Jordan writes a blasphemous book in an effort to get an Islamic Death Edict (FATWA) on his head. Sadly, the Middle East fails to read the novel. Pissed off, Mr. Jordan seeks the help of Mr. Ali to perform a staged "deadly act" before a video camera, that will apparently make both of them world famous. Mr. Ali's only qualification to perform this act is that he just happens to be "Middle Eastern Looking" and a good friend of Mr. Jordan's.
Fatwa was selected for the 2004 New York Fringe Festival, and played from August 14 to the 26th, 2004 at the Players Studio, 3C, and then enjoyed an independent run at the Blue Heron Theater from September 2nd to the 12th, 2004
Playwright: Tom Stoppard
Director: Ashok Sinha
Producer: Nilay Oza
Assistant Producer: Reshma Patel
Stage Managers: Avantika Daing, Priyanka Mathew
Set Designer: Tania Bijlani
Costume Designer: Kirche Zeile
Lighting Designer: Jeff McCrum
Music: Atul Subbiah
Actors:
Lethia Nall- Flora McCrewe
Sendhil Ramamurthy- Nirad Das
Brian Coffee- Eldon Pike
Deep Katdare- Anish Das
Helen Jean Arthur- Eleanor Swan
Coomaraswami/ Rajah: Vikram Somaya
Dilip- Debargo Sanyal
David Durance- GR Johnson
Nell- Rebecca Challis
Eric- Kevin Chap
Nazrul- Prashant Vijay
Servants- Rajat Gupta, Ranjit Gupte
Alter Ego's third production and its most ambitious to date -- is Tom Stoppard's Indian Ink which ran at the Walkerspace Theater from August 16, 2003 through August 30, 2003. Lyrically shifting between pre-independence 1930's India and the 1980's Britain of Margaret Thatcher, Indian Ink depicts a timeless love affair set against the backdrop of one of the most significant moments in history - the emergence of the Indian subcontinent from the grip of the British Empire.
While traveling in India, poet Flora Crewe meets and develops a friendship with Indian artist Nirad Das. Fifty years later, biographer Eldon Pike struggles to piece together Flora's unique and liberated life from the bits of evidence she left behind, while Nirad's son Anish develops a singular friendship with Flora's sole surviving relative, her sister Eleanor. Their stories, and the story of India's birth, form the fabric of this lush and vivid play that is replete with Stoppard's trademark wit and wordplay. Indian Ink represents Stoppard's love for India where he spent the early years of his life and which he revisits with the play.
Indian Ink was staged at the Walkerspace Theater, SoHo Rep, 46 Walker Street, from August 16th to August 30th. Due to the the overwhelming response, Indian Ink was extended by popular demand from the 2nd of September to the 7th of September.
Alter Ego's production of Chaos Theory" is a comedy of ideas that traces over several decades and eras, words, incidents, events and challenges that shape the lives of two professors who feel much more for each other than words can express. This unique comedy not only combines complex wordplay and witty banterwith scientific theories but also deftly plumbs the depths of human emotion through a veil of gentle humor. The groundbreaking production also effortlessly combines film and stage, an original score and ingenious set design creating a form of collective theatrical experience that is ravishingly original.
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Mukesh [older]: Why are you bored?
Student: I don’t know.
Mukesh [older]: Do you hate the Romantics?
Student: Um — not really.
Mukesh [older]: Do you prefer a form a literature in violent opposition to what I’m teaching? Are you a Dadaist or Surrealist? Bit of a Breton?
Student: Um – what, no – I’m an American.
Mukesh [older]: Andre Breton, you goat — tell me, have you read the Blake poem?
Student: I – um – I meant to.
Mukesh [older]: I meant to climb Mount Everest, Mr. Dakar, but I haven’t done it, have I? Tell me, have you read anything?
Student: Not really – I don’t let other people’s creative side interfere with mine.
Mukesh [older]: Completely vacuous, I see — how about Shakespeare?
Student: Yeah – I mean, I know most of the stories.
Mukesh [older]: Then this should be easy for you. Tell me, Macbeth was the king of ...?
Student: Oh – fuck – I knew this – Greece, or Rome, or one of those old places…
[They look at each other — a second’s pause]
Mukesh [older]: This is like trying to reason with cement. Have you any opinions on anything, Mr. Dakar?
Student: I – cement – what – I don’t, no – [pause] what?
Mukesh [older]: Mr. Dakar, you are a gigantic waste of vacant space, an unnecessary burden on the world’s resources of oxygen, and by far the silliest, most incompetent, slovenly piece of lazy, insignificant genetic waste that somehow coalesced together to disfigure itself into an aberration of a human being – a temporary distraction, a nothing, God’s idea of a human semi-colon in the sentence of life. I would humbly request you thus to get out of my class, why, preferably, the general vicinity of Manhattan, before I have you chased out by 12 viscous bloodhounds.
Student: [walks out] Fine — go to hell — I’m dropping this class — this course is not even a requirement for the English major.
Mukesh [older]: May the course be with you, Mr. Dakar!
Photos of the production are here and the trailer of the play below:
Chaos Theory played at the HERE Arts Center, 145 Sixth Avenue (B/T Spring and Broome) from October 10 to the 13th.
Alter Ego's first production was Girish Karnad's Hayavadana or The Talking Horse, an Indian play performed in English with primarily South Asian performers. A plot and sub-plot that intertwine to explore the tricky questions of identity and the nature of reality; the clever incorporation of motifs from traditional theatre; Yakshagana, a play within a play, dolls, masks; the irreverent inversion of mock-heroic mores.
The play is centered around the philosophical question of whether an individual's identity is derived from the head or the body, and raises issues of perfection and imperfection, of contentment and dissatisfaction. The story is told by Bhagavata who plays the multi-functional role of a stage manager, music director and narrator. The main plot is about two friends Devadatta and Kapila, who both fall in love with Padmini. Padmini in turn, falls in love with both of them. Jealousy and suspicion soon leads to a double suicide by both men in a scene that is more comic than tragic. They are brought back to life by the goddess Kali but with their heads exchanged on the other's body. The rest of the play focuses on how the bodies gradually transform to match the heads and how Padmini is again left with discontent. A subplot running through the play is the story of Hayavadana, the talking horse born with a horse's head and a human body who wants to become totally human. Other characters in the play are the stage hands and musicians that Bhagavata directs and the talking dolls that provide comic relief and provide psychological commentary on the play's inquiry.
The play was performed in the style of street theater, drawing upon traditions of rural folk theater as well as anti-naturalist and fantasy traditions in western theater. A colorful story of lives that are universal in human failings, desire and needs and one that transcends time and boundaries of race, language and culture.
