The Fingerprint Bureau

The Fingerprint Bureau description

The Fingerprint Bureau is a new thriller by Sonali Bhattacharyya about two Bengali mathematicians whose scientific discovery becomes a tool of colonial control.

The play is set in Calcutta under British rule. Two brilliant mathematicians, Azizul Haque and Chandra Bose, are given an impossible task: to develop new methods of identifying and categorising people through their fingerprints. What begins as a scientific breakthrough soon becomes something much bigger. As their work is taken up as a tool of British repression and surveillance, the two men find themselves caught between scientific discovery, colonial power and resistance.

This is a world premiere, co-produced by Stratford East and Kali Theatre, which commissioned the play. Founded in 1991, Kali develops and presents new writing by women and non-binary writers of South Asian descent. The play explores the forgotten history behind one of modern policing's most powerful technologies, and asks what it means to create something that can be used to control your own people, and who gets remembered when history is written by those in power.

The play is written by Sonali Bhattacharyya, whose Chasing Hares at the Young Vic won the Sonia Friedman Production Award and the Theatre Uncut Political Playwriting Award, and whose King Troll (The Fawn) was a finalist for the Women's Prize for Playwriting. Her other stage work includes The Jungle Book at Chichester Festival Theatre and The Little Mermaid and Arabian Nights at Bristol Old Vic, and she is part of the writing team on the BBC drama The Split Up. It is directed by Milli Bhatia, a two-time Olivier Award nominee for seven methods of killing kylie jenner and Blue Mist, both at the Royal Court, where she was previously Associate Director. The two last worked together on King Troll (The Fawn) for Kali and New Diorama.

Casting for the production is to be announced.

Book now for The Fingerprint Bureau, a new play about science, empire and who gets to decide what makes you who you are.

Playing at Theatre Royal Stratford East

Gerry Raffles Square, Stratford, E15 1BN GB (venue info)

Directions