ALTEREGO productions invites you to the world premiere of
A First Class Man
One man in pursuit of infinity. The astonishing true story of Srinivasa Ramanujan, the renowned mathematical prodigy whose ideas changed the world as we know it.
Written by DAVID FREEMAN + directed by KAREEM FAHMY*
Starring:
Bobby Abid, Chriselle Almeida*, Amir Arison*, Kelly Eubanks, Steve French*, Davis Hall*, Timothy Roselle*, Doug Simpson, Vikram Somaya, Radhika Vaz
*Theater Mania* - "The professionalism, wit and daring on abundant display . . . . make AlterEgo Productions a company to look out for"
*NEWSDAY* - "An enterprise that has been together for little more than a year, Alter Ego productions has made fast work establishing a well-defined niche for itself."
*WBAI Radio (99.5 FM*) - "There is one thing I'll tell you this year it is . .go see Indian Ink !"
*TheaterMania* - listed Indian Ink under best of 2003 as a "Shows You Should Have Seen But Probably Didn't"
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.
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.
~ ~ ~
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.
