Chokher Bali

Chokher Bali is the story of Binodini, a young, educated widow who enters the lives of a newly married couple, Mahendranath and Ashalata, and Mahendranath's childhood friend, Bihari.

Set in Bengal at the turn of the 20th century, Chokher Bali is a moving story of love and loss in a time when widows had the lowest status in a patriarchal society.

Written by Rabindranath Tagore

Adapted by Partha Chatterjee

Directed by Tannistha Mukherjee

Apr 26-28, City Lights Theater

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Where Did I Leave My Purdah?

by Mahesh Dattani

directed by Rita Bhatia

Jun 1-8, Sunnyvale Theatre

Artistic Director's Note

In the nine years of BADCo’s existence, this will be our first play based upon Rabindranath Tagore’s work. For a theatre company whose mission is meaningful South Asian theatre, this has been a grave omission. With Chokher Bali, we make amends.

Over the past two years, we have been gradually building up our capabilities in design - sets, costume, makeup, sound and lighting. On the design front, Chokher Bali is probably our most ambitious project thus far. But there is a long way to go.

In the cast of Chokher Bali, we have several actors returning to BADCo for another show, but also some new faces. The talent pool in the Bay Area is really quite deep. Even if they don’t have a lot of experience, there are so many people who are motivated enough to commit to acting and theatre. And motivation is most of what it takes.

The future of South Asian theatre in the Bay is very promising!

The Cast of

Chokher Bali

The Cast of

Chokher Bali

The Cast of

Chokher Bali

Director

Tannistha is a director, actor and a dancer. This is her second directorial outing with BADCo after Adhe Adhure. Previously, with BADCo, she has been in the casts of Name, Place, Animal, Thing, Divided By (lead), Our Stories and The Cherry Orchard. Some of her other prominent roles in the Bay Area include Draupadi in Mahabharat, Nazneen in the Indian adaptation of Arsenic and Old Lace and Tara in Tanika Gupta’s Waiting Room.

Production Team

Our Donors

$5,000+

Rita & Sunil Bhatia, Madhu & Sonny Gulati, Anuradha Maitra & Thomas Kailath, Anonymous, David E. Ramos, Anonymous, LTIMindtree, Provana

$ 2,000+

B. J. Arun, Anamika Sharma & Shiva Arunachalam, Michael Dittmar, Jaya Murthy, Dr. & Mrs. K. Pradhan, Michelle Sams, Aparna Balasubramaniam & Manish Subramanian, Infogain, Tavant

$ 1,000+

Anuraag Bharadwaj, Dimple Modgil & Sandeep Bhargava, Joseph Cleary, Sandeep Doraiswamy, Pradeep Doraiswamy, Sangeeta Doraiswamy, KK & Prabha Sridhar, Tannistha Mukherjee & Ashwin Krishnamurthy, Anandhi and Manikrishnan, Anonymous, Mira & Vijay Parmar, Karthik Ramachandran, Rajeev Sivaram, Two Six Capital

Donors (cont'd)

$ 500+

Ashok Abhishek, Renee Barnstone, Jigisha & Vinod Baya, Kamlesh Bose, Ellyn Bush, Soumya Chakravorty, Paul Costello, Anonymous, Prajvi Malhotra, Jayshree & Sanjay Radia, Anil Rao, Dilip Ratnam, Chandana Reddy & Ranjan Sinha, Meenu Sethi, Anamika & Pratish Shah, Lata Shah, Nipa Sheth, Suzanne & Kanwaljit Singh, Sujatha & Rajagopalan, Sanjay Subhedar, Ashritha Thirumalai, Anuradha Basu & Shanker Trivedi, Malika Varma

$ 200+

Madhuja & Ayan Chatterjee, Baal Bhagat, Ram Rajagopalan, Bindu Desai, Vaishnavi Sridhar, Kirti Kandade, Seema Ramanathan & R. Arun Kumar, Kartic Bhargav, Eric and Rona Fajardo, Anonymous, Zareen Khan, Karthik Rishi Krishnamurthi, Manav Misra, Rohini & Madhav Mohan, Sudha Neelakantan, Madhavan & Vasumathy Thuppal, Vijay Kumar, B Anilkumar, Neehar Giri, Manprit Lalia, Kavitha Nagarajan, Rajiv & Pinky Patel, Nanette W. Blair, Mila Bhattacharya and Raja GuhaThakurta, Tapan Joshi, Venkateshwar Kottapalli, Sushma & Amar Maletira, Anita Manwani, Sundar Nagarajan, Amitabh Sharma, Anup Som

Donors (cont'd)

$ 100+

Sara Abbasi, Shrinath Acharya, Anvitha Adhikarla, Tarana Advani, Sudhanshu Bahadur, Manu Bedi, Anushka Bhatia, Sharmini & Ravi Bhatnagar, Prasad Chakka, Anirban Chakraborty, Bharat Chandramouli, Abhinay Chennamaneni, Amith D'Souza, Francis Dacosta, Sakti Das, Shailaja Dixit, Jennifer Doar Schifter, Dean Duffy, Stefan Fisher, Sunita Ganapati, Alfred Gilbert, Subrahmanyam Goparaju, Shobana Gubbi, Yves Hepperle, Nirmal Iyengar, Simonil & Sohrab Kakalia, Ed Keyani, Anjali Kirloskar, Ramaswami Kishore, Tanushri Mathur, Mala & Varun Mehta, Yamini Mitter, Vasavi Mondeti, Lakshmi Mukundan, Swarna Murthy, Vijay Nadkarni, Radhika Narayanan, Mahesh Nihalani, Latha Palaniappan, Ankush Patel, Naila Qureshi, Anand Ramamurthy, Chinmai Raman, Rohini Rewari, Madhura Rishi, Zainab Rubaie, Shekhar Sakhalkar, Hasmig Samurkashian, Seema Sarin, Samita Sen, Sanjit Sengupta, Shailaja Shankar, Sathish & Nayana Shenoy, Martha Shirk, D. Sivakumar, Meena Srinivasan, Kala Swaminathan, Vijay Talati, Rahul Varma, Kusum Wagle

Donors (cont'd)

The list above includes donations since January 1, 2017. It was last updated on January 27, 2024.

Matching donations from employers have been counted against the employee's name. Our thanks to Adobe, Apple, Cloudera, Google, Microsoft, Oracle and UBS for their matching donations.

We couldn't do what we do without the support of our donors!

Your donation is tax-deductible in the US.

A big thanks to our corporate donors and sponsors over the years!

About Us

Meaningful Theater. Mostly.

Theatre is art. Theatre is entertainment. Theatre can also have purpose.

We call our theatre meaningful. The plays we stage are based upon contemporary political and social themes. We think our shows should be intelligent and thought-provoking. To leave you with something to think about after the curtain call.

We also believe that theatre should be entertaining – gripping and beautiful. And sometimes zany because we all like to have a good frolic once in a while.

Founded in 2014, BADCo has produced more than twenty five successful shows. Our viewing audiences and our community of artists and volunteers are both largely drawn from the Bay Area South Asian community. Our theatre, therefore, tends to be contemporary South Asian with universal themes.

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