Shayok Misha Chowdhury & Laura Grill Jaye

Shayok Misha Chowdhury is a many-tentacled writer, director, and music-maker based in Brooklyn. Currently: Misha is writing PUBLIC OBSCENITIES (Soho Rep, NAATCO), a new bilingual play, and RHEOLOGY (HERE Arts), a concert-memoir-physics-symposium. Recently: BROTHER, BROTHER (New York Theatre Workshop) with Aleshea Harris; MUKHAGNI (Under the Radar) with Kameron Neal; HOW THE WHITE GIRL GOT HER SPOTS AND OTHER 90s TRIVIA (Joe’s Pub, Ars Nova) with Laura Grill Jaye. Misha and Laura have written many musicals together; their current collaboration, BLOOD OLEANDER, reimagines a century-old Bengali drama in Tennessee coal country. Misha is also the creator of VICHITRA, a series of sound-driven, cinematic experiments including IN ORDER TO BECOME (Bushwick Starr), which he is developing into a queer Carnatic opera. He was a soloist and collaborator on the Grammy-winning album CALLING ALL DAWNS and has been awarded fellowships from Sundance, Fulbright, NYSCA/NYFA, Jerome, New York Theatre Workshop, and Kundiman. MFA: Columbia.

Laura Grill Jaye is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, improviser, educator, performer, and music director. She is half of the musical-writing duo “Grill and Chowder” with Shayok Misha Chowdhury. Their work has been seen or developed at Ars Nova, New York Theatre Workshop, SPACE on Ryder Farm, NYMF, HERE Arts Center, and Joe’s Pub @ The Public Theater. With the Laura Grill Band, Laura has written and produced two records, NEVER BEFORE and TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS, and toured nationally. The Boston Globe called her original music “jump jazz, barroom rock, chamber folk, and downright infectious.” She has collaborated with Jacob Collier, Audra McDonald, Luciana Souza, and Jason Moran. Laura received her MM in Jazz Studies from New England Conservatory and her BM in Jazz Voice and Composition from the Chicago College of Performing Arts. She is on faculty at Meridian Academy in Boston and MIT’s Music and Theater Arts program.