Interview with Sathya Sridharan – Life of Pi, Broadway
By Rajen Bhatt
@frkse_divseries
Image credit: Life of Pi, Broadway
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, Sathya Sridharan is an actor and writer from New York City. Sathya and I are old pals from back when he used to perform as half of spoken word duo BROWNSTAR with his collaborator Pushkar Sharma in Boston, Massachusetts. They performed sketches and poetry centred around the South Asian-American experience, rocking stages for a criminally brief time until they went their separate ways through the cosmos. Through a crazy coincidence, Sathya happened to be in Boston performing in Life of Pi in Boston when I messaged him on Instagram to ask what he’d been up to.
I have never seen a stage play like Life of Pi. Though, truthfully, I’m not really someone who sees a lot of plays. But I have thought a lot about theatre and whether it has any significant power to alter the universe. “It releases conflicts, disengages powers, liberates possibilities,” writes Antonin Artaud in his book The Theater and its Double, “and if these possibilities and these powers are dark, it is not the fault of the plague nor of the theatre, but of life.”
Life of Pi is humorous, dark and ruthless. Watching my friend Sathya perform intense puppetry and juggle two significant roles in the play, it was hard not to be immersed. I got to talk with him about his role in Life of Pi as well as other acting roles, personal projects, and recollecting past Boston memories with him.
oh, it'd be great to be on Broadway, but that's never gonna happen. At least not for a long time. Not until I'm famous or they write the South Asian play that I get to be in.
Rajen: You were in the Boston production of Life of Pi, and I hear you're gonna be doing the Broadway production. Can you tell us about your role in Life of Pi and how did all of your prior experiences help you to prepare for this role?
Sathya: I should say that this production started in London, in the West End, did really well in London, and this is the same production that has come now to the States, but with a different cast.
I'm a trained theatre actor - that's sort of my bread and butter. And you know, like most things, you just get an audition, you go in for it, you hope you do good work, and then you leave. And then you either complain about how bad you did, or you hope that you booked the job. I auditioned for [Life of Pi] - one audition - and I was offered the part like a few days later.
In my life, I didn't grow up wanting to be on Broadway. Like it wasn't an aspiration of mine. I didn't really know what Broadway was, and as I got older and went to New York, I was like, oh, it'd be great to be on Broadway, but that's never gonna happen. At least not for a long time. Not until I'm famous or they write the South Asian play that I get to be in. So this was very unexpected. I'm playing Mamaji, who is Pi's sort of fun uncle type character. In the book, he is sort of a master swimmer and in the movie he's described as being very big, having the swimmer's body. I'm also much younger than I think the character is often thought of. It's fun to sort of play a little bit older than what I normally get to do. I don't have a bunch of scenes where I'm going crazy. It's a few scenes where I try and land some moments. And that's a kind of skill that requires being really focused [with] all of those things I've picked up along the way in my training and in my practical experience.
Rajen: What are the biggest shifts in how you prepare for a theatrical production versus a film production?
Sathya: When I did Minor Premise, I got cast pretty late in the process, so I didn't have a lot of time to prepare. I had like a week to prepare. My story with that is that I did a proof of concept - a short for that film. I got to be good friends with the director and the writers and all that, but they were gonna go with an established name for the film, and that all kind of fell apart pretty late into the game - as they were going into production - so I was hired sort of last minute to jump. And so my preparation for that was like reading the script, trying to chart out a path for myself, learning the lines as fast as I could.
I was learning lines as I was shooting. It's a very chaotic story where things are changing constantly, and I felt very much out of control in a very helpful way.
When you're doing a film, there's a little more downtime while you're doing it. You don't have to do it all in one go, you do it in takes. You’re constantly improving the performance. You're improving the setup and the shot, so there's a lot of “hurry up and wait” with a film or a television than with a play.
It's like you have weeks of rehearsals and then you are in performances. And for me, I show up to the theater early. I try to get my body just sort of moving in some way and try to get my voice out, do some warm-ups. I don't try to over warm up… a lot of folks really get in there, but I try to pay attention to what I need.
It's just about how I'm feeling on the day and just to make sure my body feels limber and open, and my voice feels like it can go where it needs to go. I listen to some music - I usually am pretty early to show up, put some music on and just like take my time getting into it.
I have been working on this pilot about a South Asian kid growing up who falls in love with punk music
Rajen: What other projects are you currently working on?
Sathya: I have a few things in the oven that I'm trying to get off the ground this year. I've been collaborating with a filmmaker who's been trying to get a film made for a few years that he wrote for me. And we are very close to having enough money. It’s all just a money game, so we're trying to get the money for that. But it's a beautiful father-son story, about chasing your dreams versus the duty of taking care of family and how those things are always opposed to each other. It's such a gorgeous script and I'm so excited to make it. It's just really hard. It will be his first feature. I'm a no-name still. Investors don't really know what they're getting into if they throw money towards us. We're getting really close [to funding the film], and we hope to shoot that this year in the fall.
I may also be shooting a film in Sri Lanka in the late summer with another collaborator and dear friend of mine. Sort of the third of these films we’ve been making about relationships and the ways in which significant people float in and out of our lives… it’s a romcom, sort of influenced by New Wave, Rohmer, a bit of Linklater. But again, everything’s contingent on money.
I have been working on a bunch of things. I'm hoping to direct a short film this year that is a little chunk of a feature that I've written, which is one of three stories that I've scripts for. I've basically written this trilogy - my Apu (Satyajit Ray) trilogy about a South Asian literary prodigy growing up in the Midwest. There are basically three stories following his life and I'm hoping to direct a short that would be a little chunk of the first film.
And it's like continuing this project, telling interesting stories and putting [South Asian people] in interesting contexts. Interesting contexts that are both relatable and new. I have been working on this pilot about a South Asian kid growing up who falls in love with punk music. That was my story in high school and my collaborator's story. That stuff is so interesting - putting us into real contexts that are different from what we've seen before. Rather than just the story about “she needs to get married”, “we need to arrange the marriage”, or, you know, any number of those tired tropes that we've been watching and seeing for decades. You know?
Rajen: Absolutely. With the collaboration, you said a part was written for you. What would you describe as your ideal role? Like what kind of roles do you really enjoy and savour?
Sathya: I like things that require me to really get quiet with myself as an actor. I like things that require me to turn off my brain a little bit and not turn off my brain…really make sure I have some internal life happening that isn't necessarily on the page or that is spoken.
I'm really interested in the ways in which silence and subtlety, we live inside of that. I'm a pretty verbal person, so anytime that I can get thoughtful and specific, those kinds of characters really excite me. I love playing artists and people with vivid and wild passions!
It's so funny - I've done a lot of different things and they're often very physical. I end up doing a lot of things that are very physical and unhinged. I think I've danced in about every short film or film that I've been in, in some way or done some kind of wild physical bit, so to me it’s really exciting to turn off the brain and get into my body.
I love playing artists and I love the idea of the South Asian artist. I think that's a really interesting, unexplored space because that's who I am. But it's also like, there's so much inside of that. There's so much beauty and complexity in there. I don’t know if that's a very helpful answer, but also let me play some cool guy. Like I won't [get cast to] play a cool guy that smokes a cigarette and pops his collar at you. I'm not a very physical person, I'm not a very big person. But I would love to play a villain. I would love to play something that's mildly terrifying. If you got a part, can you write it for me, please?
Rajen: Yep. I'll get on that!
Life of Pi is currently in production on Broadway.
About Rajen
Rajen Bhatt is based out of Boston, USA and records and performs music under various monikers including FRKSE. He sometimes operates the Divergent Series imprint in between teaching math to 15 and 16 year olds and reading books on theology and metaphysics. He appreciates mid-90's hip-hop and mid-90s death metal in equal measure.