Man of the Heart received positive notices wherever it went. In California, the Illuminations observed how the play “interweaves contradictory accounts of Lalon's biography… through a dizzy mix of narration, archival documents, and video footage” and, according to the Siliconeer, it is “a performance that is at once compelling, energetic, and enormously moving”. Richard Schechner, one of the foremost directors of the American avant-garde theatre in New York, notes how “Man of the Heart warps histories and crosses timelines, combining cultures and aesthetics in an engaging and emotionally moving way”. William B Worthen, the senior American theatre scholar at Columbia University calls it “an exciting piece of theatre, using all the arts of the stage to bring the mysterious story, spirituality, and music of Lalon Phokir to life”. In Calcutta, Ananda Lal, the editor of the Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre, saw in Man of the Heart “those rare flashes of creative insight that separate an artistic search from just research” (The Telegraph, Calcutta).  Shankha Ghosh, one of the greatest Bengali poets ever, called it, "Extraordinary! Flawless!"

Click on the links below for full write-ups:

Illuminations, Berkeley, California

Siliconeer, Bay Area, Northern California

Hindustan Times, New Delhi

Pratham Alo (Bengali), Dhaka, Bangladesh

Parabaas, New York

Cinema Stage, New York

Prabasi Anandabazar (Bengali), Calcutta, India

BBC Audio Review (Bengali), London, UK

The Telegraph, Calcutta, India

Ananda Bazar Patrika (Bengali), Calcutta, India

India Today (Bengali), Calcutta, India

 Video Previews

Preview of the UC Berkeley  Performance, 2005

Neighbour Sequence from Calcutta Performance, 2007-08 

Scholar and artist, Proshot Kalami has been the Videographer and Director of Documentation for the Man of the Heart Project from the very beginning. She continued documenting the 2008 research phase in Bangladesh with an aim to make a video documentary covering the whole range of the project, from research to performance and back and forth....

 Audio Samples

Jewel in the Man is an album of Lalon Phokir's songs recorded by Sudipto Chatterjee. Many of the songs in this album formed part of the repertoire performed in Man of the Heart.

To listen to a selection of songs from this album please click here.