Desi Diaspora Inspires Downtown Drama
A Lower Manhattan resident and patron of the arts, Kiran Merchant, is presenting the first-ever South Asian Playwrights Festival this weekend at the performance space of Pace University’s Actors Studio Drama School, at 80 Greenwich Street (south of Rector Street).
A veteran of more than 30 years as a writer, director, and producer in film, television, and theater (as well as a sometime actor—you may have seen him on “Law & Order” or “The Blacklist”), Mr. Merchant moved Downtown three years ago. Almost from the moment he arrived, “I have wanted to bring the vibrant theatrical scene of India to New York,” he explains. “South Asians are a fast-growing community, both in Lower Manhattan, and the wider region. So they are a natural reservoir of talent—and a natural audience—for theatrical productions that are rooted in tradition, but incubated in New York.”
Mr. Merchant was recently invited to join the Board of Advisors at the Sands College of Performing Arts, a newly formed school within Pace and headquartered in Lower Manhattan. This led to a partnership with the university in launching the festival.
“When I mentioned to Pace president Marvin Krislov that I wanted to use their space on Greenwich Street for community engagement,” Mr. Merchant recalls, “he was immediately excited by the idea.”
“This is part of a swelling wave of South Asian arts,” he adds. “As the community is growing and thriving, it brings greater awareness of artists within its own ranks, along with interest in their work by a diverse audience.”
This weekend’s festival runs for three nights, beginning this evening (Friday) and continuing through Sunday. The performances will consist of staged table reads, a format popular among show business professionals as a kind of developmental workshop to test new material in front of a live audience.
The three plays that will be performed are the finalists of a competition that drew more than 100 submissions by South Asian playwrights from around the world, which was launched as part of the South Asian Artistic Initiative.
Friday’s show (at 7:30pm) is “American Hunger,” by Nikhil Mahapatra, which chronicles the rivalry between two immigrant-owned South Asian restaurants in a fast-gentrifying Crown Heights, as the second generations of both families begin to question their parents’ values.
Saturday’s performance (also at 7:30pm) is “Tea for Toofi,” by Ravi Kapoor. This retelling of Molière’s “Tartuffe” is a farce updated to Southern California in the 1980s, in which a retired computer engineer invites a Hindu priest into his home to set straight his wayward family.
And Sunday’s production is “A Muslim in the Midst.” Set in India, during the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, this intense drama focuses on chance encounter between two couples that turns an act of kindness into a grim odyssey through prejudice, guilt, fear, and ignorance.