TLab Shares Hosts
FONTWALA: A Solo Play in English
Written and Performed by Shubhra Prakash
Directed by Marcus Yi
“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 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 history to try and tell one story. 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?
Inspired by the story of typographer and font designer of Indian scripts, Rajeev Prakash.
Performance Dates Times:
Friday July 28 at 7:30 pm
Saturday July 29 at 3 pm and 7pm
Sunday July 30 at 3pm and 7pm
Tickets:
$25, plus fees
FONTWALA Trailer
Snippet from FONTWALA
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