Where Did I Leave My Purdah?

Where Did I Leave my Purdah? is the story of Nazia Sahiba, a veteran theatre actor, and her complex relationships with those closest to her. Spanning four decades, the play moves seamlessly, between the past and the present. With a gripping plot and finely etched characters, Purdah is one of the most memorable plays written by Sahitya Akademi Award winner Mahesh Dattani.

Starring Ranjita Chakravarty, from Netflix’s Never Have I Ever, as Nazia Sahiba.

Written by Mahesh Dattani

Directed by Rita Bhatia

Jun 1-8, Sunnyvale Theatre

Up Next

Artistic Director's Note

Mahesh Dattani is one of our favorite people. This is the third play of his that we are staging. He has directed for us and held acting workshops remotely during the pandemic. He is of course a supremely talented theatre artist (those Sahitya Akademi awards aren't just handed out to anyone!). But he is also a terrific human being. In BADCO's early years, he was most generous with his time and connections in the Indian theatre circles. We are thrilled to be doing another Dattani play.

Where Did I Leave My Purdah? is a partition story. But it is also a story about theatre; about a larger-than-life aging diva - Nazia Sahiba. In the play there are flashback scenes from Abhigyan Shakuntalam being performed in pre-partition India - a delicious blend of mythology theatre and a period piece. The play, directed by BADCo Executive Director Rita Bhatia, will delight your senses.

We are also delighted to have film and theatre artist Ranjita Chakravarty return to BADCo. Ranjita has directed three plays for us, but this is her first time in the cast. With her film career heating up who knows when we'll be able to see her next on stage. So let's enjoy it while we can.

With Purdah, we end our 2023-24 main stage season. On June 22, we have a staged reading of Mahasweta Devi's Mother of 1084, directed by Ranjita Chakravarty, which will be the last show of the season. We are doing a staged reading after a long time. It will be ticketed on a pay-what-you-want basis. Do come.

Next season marks our 10th anniversary. Yes! Our small but mighty theatre company is going to be 10! We are planning a special season and some fanfare. Expect some great theatre!

The Cast of

WHERE DID I LEAVE MY PURDAH?

Director

Rita Bhatia is a story-teller, actor, director, producer, singer and playwright. After the pandemic restrictions were lifted and theatre returned, she produced and stage managed The Square Root of a Sonnet and directed Name, Place Animal, Thing both for BADCo.

Among her many roles on stage, her favorites are Gupta Madam in Ajay Shukla’s Taj Mahal Ka Tender, Dolly in Girish Karnad’s Boiled Beans on Toast, Kamini in Basab Pradhan’s Divided By, Priya Singh in Not Equal To and Dolon in Mahesh Elkunchwar’s Sonata.

During the pandemic, Rita adapted, produced and directed several online staged productions, some of her favorites being, Alipha, Forever, Mumbai Beats, Bobby & Bobbi, Chuckle with Chekhov and No Make-Up.

As playwright, Rita has written, directed and produced two short plays Chameli and Bhavna & Bhuvan.

Rita is Executive Director of Bay Area Drama Company.

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

$ 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

$ 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

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 Theatre. 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, thought-provoking and leave you with something to think about after the curtain call.

At the same time, we 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 artists, volunteers and audience are all largely drawn from the Bay Area South Asian community.