Alter Ego Blog

Chaos Theory was Alter Ego's second production

Playwright: Anuvab Pal
Directed by: Bhavna Thakur, Andy Brown, Anuvab Pal
Assistant Directors: Amit Nerurkar, Rashila Amin
Production & Design: Ashwan Wadhwa, Kapil Khanna, Nilay Oza, Shivani Aneja
Finance & Publicity: Arun Nava, Avantika Daing, Ritendra Roy, Shelly Garg,
Sujatha Raman, Nina Mehta
Costumes & Props: Maya Chandrasekaran, Nina Mehta, Puja Ogale, Reshma
Patel, Tamanna Ramnarine, Vaishali Vig
Film & Sound: Atul Subbiah, Ranjit Gupte, Ravi Kamble, Shan Raju

Actors: Bhavna Thakur, Vikram Somaya With: Alok Tewari, Alladin, Behnaz Khusrokhan, David Chan, Debargo Sanyal, Emily Merryn, Jennifer Gould, Prashant Vijay, Sridhar Maruvada, Vaishali Vig

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.