by Sarah A. Spitz
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) October 2, 2026 While most people try to avoid being identified as a “hypocrite,” Arpita Mukherjee’s New York-based theater company, Hypokrit Live Arts, plays with the dual nature of the word. “H-Y-P-O-K-R-I-T,” she explains, “is the Ancient Greek word for actor. And it actually means to tell the truth.”
With her latest production, Wives by playwright Jaclyn Backhaus, the notion that “behind every great man is a great woman” gets turned inside out.
Mukherjee says, “It’s a play about looking at certain historical men, made mythical by the women in their lives, and radically reimagining those stories from the women’s point of view.”
Backhaus’s acclaimed comedy receives its Southern California premiere at East West Players’ 61st Mainstage season, beginning October 8 (previews, opening October 11), following its off-Broadway debut at Playwrights Horizons in 2019.
Mukherjee is co-founder and Artistic Director of Hypokrit, whose roots are based in the classics. “So much of my early directing experience is Shakespeare, Molière, Chekhov,” she says. “I was imagining that we would do classics in modernized, contemporary ways.” Now the company focuses almost entirely on new work, with a South Asian inflection.
Her credits span Broadway, where she served as resident director of The Kite Runner—adapted from Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini’s novel of the same name—and stages including LA’s Geffen Playhouse, San Diego Rep, and New York Theatre Workshop. She co-wrote the book for Monsoon Wedding, The Musical at St. Ann’s Warehouse; her film work includes Running, with Danny Pudi, and the Disney+ Hotstar release Gulmohar. She’s also developed projects with Netflix, AMC, and WIIP.
Wives unfolds in four unconnected acts, tethered by the same four actors playing different roles throughout. The first, mostly historically grounded, is set in 16th-century France during the reign of King Henry II, framed around the love triangle between his wife, Catherine de’ Medici, and Diane de Poitiers, the mistress he loved his whole life.
The second imagines what might happen if Ernest Hemingway’s three wives — Hadley, Martha Gellhorn, and Mary — crossed paths at his funeral.
The third moves to a prince’s court in 1920s colonial Rajasthan, where a Maharani and a mystical court healer named Roop Rai confront motherhood and colonialism.
The fourth lands in a contemporary university, where a young woman wrestles with how to define herself at all. “It’s a 90-minute joy ride,” Mukherjee says. “There’s a lot coming at you.”
The play, she says, “is a quest for how women can tell their own stories and define themselves in a patriarchal society. But it’s done with great fun.” And there’s no quibbling, when asked whether this is a feminist play. ”Yes it is. I love the word feminist. We should be asking people, how are you not feminist? There should be a different word for that.”
Mukherjee was born in New Delhi, and her connection to theater began early, shaped by parents who often brought her to performances, and she grew up listening to Indian classical music. She remembers seeing The Merchant of Venice at the National School of Drama, starring the celebrated actor Naseeruddin Shah, a production that left her “blown away,” and that she credits with drawing her toward Shakespeare in the first place.
But after the family moved to the US, “It didn’t feel like the theater was a welcoming place for people like my parents, who were immigrants,” she says. This is where Hypokrit’s notion of “radical hospitality” comes from, the desire to create “a social gathering place where you could have conversations, to invite the kinds of people like my parents and their communities to join in.”
For Wives, she draws on rasa, a South Asian aesthetic built around nine core emotional states. “Rasa means juice, there’s joy, there’s sadness, which feels like you’re telling an actor to put an emotion on it but it’s physical acting, how you embody things, the transference of energy.
“The well is so deep,” she says of the tradition. “South Asian cultural heritage is complicated and so multifaceted. There’s Indian mythology, classical dance, all these elements that to me just feel like they work for this play. Even if only one act is actually set in India.”
Mukherjee built the production around movement, letting the ensemble discover the play physically. “Every play has a secret, that you want to investigate and discover. We weren’t sitting around the table discussing character motivations, we got up on our feet and played. We did improv and we devised movement to see how the ensemble physically embodied the text. It’s like hearing a piece of music or seeing dance at a certain moment to make you feel something. It’s physical comedy.”
Prior experience and intuition played into the casting. Arasha, as Wife 3, had worked with Mukherjee the previous year; choosing Parvesh Cheena was a “no-brainer,” based on a summer collaboration. Rachna Khatau, as Wife 1, arrived highly recommended by New York colleagues who knew Mukherjee was heading to Los Angeles. E.M. Davis, playing Wife 2, was someone Mukherjee had never met before the audition. “I just knew that they were perfect,” she says. “It’s the cast of my dreams.”
I asked Mukherjee if she chose the play or if it chose her. In a sense, “It chose me. It’s come full circle for me.” Backhaus’s 2016 play Men on Boats, directed by Will Davis—a production without a literal boat—reshaped how she thought about theatre as a metaphorical space. “It’s a world built by actors,” she said. “That’s where it’s most possible to imagine crazy things.”
In 2018, she, Backhaus and Davis worked together on India Pale Ale at Playwrights Horizons. Directing Backhaus’s work again, at East West Players where she’s directed before, with an artistic director she admires in Lily Tung Crystal, she says, “I feel like it was kismet,” she says. “Everything sort of aligned.”
Opening weekend will include audience talkbacks on October 8, 9, and 10, including Mukherjee, Backhaus, and cast members, there will be a nonprofit-spotlight night and a “tastemakers” night highlighting figures from the local community. “It’s not just about seeing a play passively and leaving,” Mukherjee says. “It’s about engaging with the material.”
Wives takes place at East West Players, October 8 – November 1 at David Henry Hwang Theater, Union Center for the Arts. 120 Judge John Aiso Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Tickets are Pay-What-You-Will: Orchestra from $25, Balcony from $15.
