What goes into the recipe for a new play? For Dhaba on Devon Avenue, now in its belated premiere in a co-production by Chicago’s Writers Theatre and TimeLine Theatre (June 19-July 27), playwright Madhuri Shekar stirred in a helping of immigrant history, a dash of Chekhov, a pair of local actors she wanted to write for—and a to-die-for saag grilled cheese sandwich a friend once made for her.
“I was like, ‘What the fuck, this is amazing!’” recalled Shekar, whose plays include Queen, House of Joy, and A Nice Indian Boy (now also a film). That moment of culinary rapture is recreated in Dhaba when Rita, a young South Asian American woman who works in her family-owned restaurant, offers this off-menu delicacy to her business consultant sister, Sindhu, who’s on hand to try to rescue the business from foreclosure. The eatery is in trouble because their widowed patriarch, Neeraj (played by Anish Jethmalani, one of the actors Shekar had in mind as she wrote), refuses to change the menu of Sindhi specialities, even as patrons dwindle and the historic South Asian neighborhood of Devon Avenue gentrifies. In his stubbornness, Neeraj is also tragically ignoring his daughter’s real talent in the kitchen.
For this tale of inevitable change and self-defeating denial, Chekhov proved a useful guide for Shekar, who admitted being “nervous to write this kind of play; I usually write very plotty plays.” The Cherry Orchard was suggested by director Chay Yew, who commissioned Dhaba to be his final play as artistic director of Victory Gardens Theatre in early 2020, before Covid shut it down (its original staging only got as far as a run-through).
Throughout, food has been a constant inspiration and a balm. As Yew put it, “If we don’t talk about food, we’re not really Asian. When we’re eating, we’re talking about what we’re going to eat next.”
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