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The Story:
Bunty Berman Presents… tells the story of a failing movie studio in the Bollywood of the late 1950s. Studio owner Bunty Berman, a passionate and tireless producer and director, is reluctant to admit that his main star and close friend, Raj Dahwan, is over the hill and losing his fans. Even Raj's co-star, the up-and-coming diva Shambervi, refuses to work with him anymore. Notorious gangster Shankar Dass, is made aware of the studios problems on the sly by Bunty's screenwriter. Dass then shows up to force Bunty to allow him to "invest" – but with the condition that his spoiled son, Chandra, become the new star of their movies. Pandemonium ensues.
Despite being set in Bombay in the 1950s, Bunty Berman Presents… is in fact a musical comedy in the tradition of Singing in the Rain or The Producers: "backstage" stories that revel in the absurdity of show business. The displacing of that kind of story to India, with songs that might remind one of Irving Berlin or British music hall, makes for a hilarious contrast. But it also gives one a real picture of how the Indian film business began, very much in the model of Hollywood, before it grew into the Bollywood of today. Ayub clearly has a great affection for this early period, which he grew up watching, and that warmth informs this piece and makes it disarmingly charming.
Ayub's great gift is for writing comedies that are both very realistic and open-hearted; even with the period setting and wild comic tone, he keeps the action grounded in real emotion. He also writes for ensembles, with great roles for a number of performers and beautifully detailed relationships — the kind of work that we specialize in at The New Group. In this comic piece, he's written two surprisingly moving male relationships: film producer Bunty Berman's friendship with his aging star, Raj Dhawan; and the father/son conflict between gangster Shankar Dass and his son who wants to become a star. The story balances these stories with great production numbers, just as the singularly memorable songs (co-composed with the arranger/musical director Paul Bogaev) alternate between the intimate, romantic ones and full company dances. Bunty is especially rich for this variety.
Ayub Khan-Din – Playwright, Co-Composer, Lyricist
Ayub Khan Din was born in 1961 and grew up in Salford, Manchester. After leaving school he worked briefly as a hairdresser before enrolling in drama school, where he wrote his first stage play, East is East (1997), for Tamasha Theatre Company. An autobiographical story of a mixed-race family growing up in an overcrowded terraced house in a white, working-class area of Salford in the early 1970s, it was first staged at the Royal Court Theatre in London and has been produced many times since. It was subsequently adapted (by the author) into a highly successful feature film. Both play and film have won numerous awards including EVENING STANDARD Best Film Award, WRITERS' GUILD Award for Best New Writer and also Best West End Play and JOHN WHITING Award Best Stage Play. His next play, Last Dance at Dum Dum (1999) at the Ambassadors Theatre, follows the septuagenarian members of the dwindling Anglo-Indian community in Calcutta, Notes on Falling Leaves was performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 2004. Rafta Rafta (2007), a comic adaptation of Bill Naughton's 1960s story, All in Good Time which was first produced at the National Theatre, London and then by the New Group in New York. It won a Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy in 2008. A film version is due for release in 2012. His most recent play, All the Way Home (2011), was produced at The Library Theatre in Manchester.
Paul Bogaev – Co-Composer
Paul Bogaev is a multi award-winning music director, arranger, conductor, and composer. He received his first Grammy for Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida, for which he produced and conducted the TONY award-winning score. He was also music director on Broadway for Tarzan, Bombay Dreams (TONY nomination for best orchestrations), Sunset Boulevard, Aspects of Love, Chess, Les Miserables, Starlight Express, Cats and The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber with Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman.
Last season Paul joined the new creative team of Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark as music producer.
Paul's second Grammy was as Executive Producer of the soundtrack of the Oscar-winning film musical, Chicago. His other films include Nine, Across the Universe, Dreamgirls, Connie and Carla and the animated Lion King, Tarzan, Mulan, and Emperor's New Groove. aul also served as music director of the ABC-TV film musicals Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, Annie (Emmy Award) and South Pacific. As a symphony conductor, Paul conducted the music for Francis Ford Coppola's presentation of the silent film epic Napoleon with major orchestras around the world. Among the pop, film, and theater stars he has worked with are with Sting, Phil Collins, Elton John, AR Rahman, Bono and The Edge, Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston, Brandy, Beyonce Knowles, Toni Braxton, Michael Bolton, Hugh Jackman, Glenn Close, Jennifer Hudson, Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, Catherine Zeta Jones, Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban, Judi Dench, Liam Neeson, Harry Connick, Jr., Drew Barrymore, Whoopi Goldberg, Kathy Bates, Sophia Loren, Kate Hudson, and Fergie. In addition, Mr Bogaev wrote and produced songs for a stage production of THE THREE MUSKETEERS, which ran for four years in Europe, and recently his score for BATTLECRY, a musical about the Battle of Gettysburg, premiered to rave reviews and will be performed in concert in 2013.
Scott Elliott – Director
Scott Elliot is the founding Artistic Director of The New Group, where he has produced over 40 plays, 17 of which he has directed, including Blood From a Stone, The Kid, Groundswell, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Hurlyburly, Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Fever, What the Butler Saw, Rafta, Rafta…, East is East, and five plays by Mike Leigh: Two Thousand Years, Abigail's Party, Smelling a Rat, Goose-Pimples, and Ecstasy. His Broadway credits include Present Laughter, Barefoot in the Park, and three plays produced by The Roundabout Theatre Company: The Threepenny Opera, The Women, and Three Sisters. As a producer, Mr. Elliott received a Tony Award for The New Group's original production of Avenue Q (Best Musical). He is also a film director and screenwriter.
This will be the third musical The New Group has done. Avenue Q, the 18th longest running musical in history, began Off-Broadway in 2003, winning the 2003 Lortel Award for Best Off-Broadway musical before it moved to Broadway where it won the 2004 Tony Award for Best Musical. Avenue Q has been performed in London, Las Vegas, three national tours as well as productions in Paris, Tokyo, Stockholm, Rome and Seoul. In 2010 The New Group developed and produced The Kid (selected for the NEA Award) , which was nominated for 5 Drama Desk Awards including Best Musical, and received the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical. The Kid is currently preparing for a Broadway production in 2013.
Praise for Rafta, Rafta:
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| "This is one invitation you'll want to accept. In an era of faster-is better entertainment Rafta is notable for its winningly slow hand. Mr. Khan Din finds felicitous new details in rendering classic father-and-son conflict." |
| Ben Brantley, The New York Times, May 9, 2008 |
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| "Consummate comedy. The playwrights has an excellent feel for dynamics of family life. The humor is… insightful and characters never devolve into stereotype." |
| Frank Scheck, The New York Post, May 12, 2008
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| "Having hit the jackpot in 1996 with East is East, Ayub Khan-Din has been a little subdued of late. But anyfears that he might be a one-hit wonder are dispelled by this buoyant transposition of Bill Naughton's All In Good Time to Bolton's Indian community… Khan-Din's success lies in integrating Naughton's plot into a vivid portrait of Indian family life. The play has all the virtues, and a few of the vices, of popular comedy. The real pleasure lies in seeing Khan-Din use a northern folk comedy to explore the recognisable fissures in Asian family life." |
| Michael Billington, The Guardian (UK), April 27, 2007 |
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| Praise for East is East: |
| " Mr. Khan-Din's play..projects… an instinctive sense of the family hearth as somewhere you want to escape from and to stay in forever, the first and the last place you want to be. |
| Ben Brantley, The New York Times, May26, 1999 |
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The Indo-American Arts Council is a 501 ©3 not-for-profit secular arts organization passionately dedicated to promoting, showcasing and building an awareness of artists of Indian origin in the performing arts, visual arts, literary arts and folk arts. For information please visit .
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