Why I'm an Actor

In times of adversity, we turn to God and to art for meaning amidst the suffering because he who has a ‘why’ can bear any ‘how’. It is humbling what we can endure when connected to purpose. The common denominator between religion and art is story: how we make sense of our world and our humanity. Acting is how I process my humanity. As prayer is my place to wrestle with myself and extract awareness, performance is my place to process the eternal wisdom that must be found in both myself and the text. In a culture that sits at the intersection of self-indulgence and self-destruction, many of us spend too long being the antagonist of our own stories–myself included. Acting saved me from myself. Putting my attention on purpose over ego, as an actor does when pursuing an objective, allows me to transcend to a divine place of 0% self-consciousness, 100% self-awareness. At that point, acting becomes more than performance: it becomes truth. 

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As a Hindu, growing up I derived my sense of self from the belief that I had two dharmic duties determining my identity: to be an artist and a mother. It wasn’t until I was eighteen years old  that I realized they are the same. As artists we are the parents of culture. Through art, we craft our definition of love long before our first kiss and learn about the birds and the bees long before we’ve had “the talk” with our parents. In the words of Tom Stoppard, we get our moral sensibility through art. Just as with being a parent, there comes great responsibility with being an artist. I was blessed with parents who taught me not how to see the world, but how to question it. Therein lies my philosophy of drama: I do not make art to play God and tell people this is the world. I make art to provide a laboratory for individuals to be brave and experience things in the imaginary world that are too painful to experience in reality. 

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 Life as an actor is simultaneously the most selfless and the most self-fulfilling endeavor I can pursue. To act is to stand on stage and expose your innermost vulnerabilities. It is being willing to tell the audience, “I’m hurting. I know you might be hurting too. I’m willing to hurt in front of you so you know you’re not alone.” It is the ultimate manifestation of empathy and an expression of love. Loving is not seeing perfection in someone, but rather, seeing yourself in someone. My goal as an actor is to be a mirror for the audience to see themselves in me and go home feeling a little less alone. This is no simple feat, for it is one thing for an individual to seek out the truth of the universe and deliver it to the masses, like the messenger; it is a substantially deeper thing to take this truth and apply it practically in service of the masses, like the scientist; but it is only the artist who truly embodies this truth of the universe--who allows it to possess not only her mind, but also her heart, her womb, and her soul--and distills it down to something both personal and transcendental.

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As an Artist-Mother of our culture aiming to inspire purpose over ego, self-awareness over self-consciousness, and revolution over resignation my goal is to someday start my own theatre company and bring visibility to my Guyanese and Surinamese heritage. I am particularly interested in theatre investigating the Indian Diaspora through Rasa Theory, and comparing Eastern and Western mythology, specifically through the archetypal Angry Mother and The Divine Feminine. I want to devise work investigating the erasure of Lilith from the Judeochristian narrative and her connection to the Hindu goddess, Kali, as well as work scrutinizing the parallels between Helen of Troy and Sita from the Hindu epic, The Ramayana. Additionally, I hope to emulate iconic South Asian women like Indra Nooyi, Mira Nair, Indira Gandhi, and Kalpana Chawla because representation matters.