Review: Rheology, a Theatrical Experiment of Death and Sand

Rheology, Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s shapeshifting theatrical experiment at the Bushwick Starr, opens with a lecture on the physics of sand. Oh dear, I thought as I was confronted by Krit Robinson’s set, which has transformed the Starr’s new space on Eldert Street into a small lecture hall with a blackboard full of mathematical equations. The hard sciences only rarely grace our stages, most often in the work of Tom Stoppard. But Chowdhury one-ups the author of Arcadia by putting a real live physicist onstage—his mom.

Bulbul Chakraborty is a theoretical physicist who has been, for the past decade, primarily interested in the physics of “capricious matter” like sand, which is ostensibly a solid but behaves in some ways like a liquid when in motion (“rheology” is the study of the flow of matter). Chakraborty asks the class what kind of matter they think sand is.

Pointing to one audience member in the solid camp, she asks, “Okay. So when you say it’s a solid, what do you mean by that, how would you define a solid?” And if you listen closely enough in this moment, you can hear 90 sphincters tightening as we are transported back to science class.

Fear not. This is but an opening salvo in a 90-minute show that flows according to its own special rules, impossible to categorize but undeniably theatrical and occasionally even thrilling.

Chakraborty is a major contributor to the thrills, but you wouldn’t expect it at first glance. Straining to remember her lines and sipping water from a coffee mug mid-sentence, she has none of the poise of a trained actor—and yet she is surprisingly convincing when it really counts, single-handedly creating the most suspenseful moment in the entire play.

She is later joined by Chowdhury, the author of the Pulitzer-shortlisted Public Obscenities and director of the upcoming Prince Faggot, who spends the first section seated in the audience scribbling notes (he is the director of this production, in addition to playing one onstage). He describes his close relationship with his mother and nagging fear of her death, explaining that Rheology is both an excuse to spend more time with her (“as long as we’re doing this show she is literally…contractually obligated to be alive”) and a kind of “exposure therapy,” as Chakraborty enacts her own death multiple times, in different theatrical styles.

“Mothers and their gays sons” has emerged as a theme of this theatrical season, but Chowdhury is the first to cast his actual mother and we quickly understand why, as Chakraborty and son exude a special kind of chemistry that instantly charms the audience in a way I’ve mostly only experienced with seasoned cabaret performers. They are the Judy and Liza of experimental theater.

Chowdhury has a particularly lovely voice, which weaves sensuously around the cello stylings of George Crotty during a section that imagines as Chakraborty’s death as a melodrama by the Bengali playwright Rabindranath Tagore. It takes place under dramatic lighting by Mextly Couzin and Masha Tsimring, beautifully accented by monsoon rain (sound design by Tei Blow).

As Chowdhury lights a match and bulges his eyes, threatening to immolate himself on her pyre like the Hindu widows of old, the equations on the blackboard begin to dance and glow in an eerie green (spectacular video design by Kameron Neal). Mesmerized, he takes up a piece of chalk and begins to calculate.

It’s beautiful. It’s ridiculous. It’s unexpectedly moving. Chowdhury endows the moment with all three qualities simultaneously and with equal force, conjuring a rare and unstable element for us to briefly behold.

Rheology is full of such surprises, which I won’t spoil here. It is a delightful reminder that something that might at first appear uninteresting (a theatrical exploration of a mother-son relationship, sand) often conceals much mystery.