Fontwala : a solo play in English

TLab Shares Presents:
FONTWALA

Written and performed by Shubhra Prakash
Directed by Marcus Yi

BUY TICKETS: Friday, July 28, 2023 at 7:30pm + July 29, 2023 at 3pm and 7:30pm + July 30, 2023 at 3pm and 7:30pm.

Theaterlab, 357 West 36th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10018

For many languages, the journey from paper to screens has not been a simple one, there have been many struggles on the way to the digital realm, I want to tell one such story through my play FONTWALA! - Shubhra Prakash, playwright and performer.

In the 1990s India, Fontwala is an aspiring typographer and font designer of Indian languages who designs the Anglo Nagari Keyboard, one of the first software that allows typing of Indian scripts on the Latin-based keyboard.

In the present time Shilpi, Fontwala’s niece has returned to India after spending two decades as an immigrant in the US to write the story of her uncle, Fontwala.

Shilpi discovers what it means for a "complex" script to survive in a digital world and for a person with complex histories to try and tell one story. Inspired by the story of typographer and font designer of Indian scripts, Rajeev Prakash.

what remains of an artist who becomes an entrepreneur ?
what remains of the aesthetic of a language digitized ?
what remains of a dream of returning to one’s homeland to live in after 20 years in the west ?

a story about language, scripts, technology, power of the printed word and South Asian identity.

PARTNERS

The program is organized by Rattapallax & Bowery Poetry and is funded by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of NY Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Past performance was at Bowery Poetry Club on 10/17/2022 7:00 PM, 10/18/2022 7:00 PM, 10/19/2022 7:00 PM, 10/22/2022 2:00 PM & 10/23/2022 2:00 PM