Indian American actor Bhavesh Patel shines on Broadway

NEW YORK (Diya TV) — Playing the ‘crazy playwright’ in Present Laughter’s four-month Broadway stint, Indian-American Bhavesh Patel shines bright alongside Tony-awardee Kevin Kline.

“Theatre can be very under the radar,” Patel says.

“But it’s the only medium that requires you to have the energy of an athlete and the focus to gauge an audience’s reaction and transform that into a powerful performance,” said the 37-year-old actor in a GQ India article.

Patel has been working the New York Broadway scene for over 14 years.

Following gigs at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London and Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, Patel earned a masters in fine arts from New York University.

He began landing roles in Broadway productions like five-time Tony award-winning War Horse and off-Broadway shows like Indian Ink, playing a first-generation Anglo-Indian with a penchant for lengthy monologues.

Patel hasn’t focused on television, though he has landed several minor roles. A turban-wearing pharmacist who’s been robbed. A cop on NYC 22. A doctor on Gossip Girl. A techie on Person Of Interest. He also had a recurring 2013 role in The Good Wife.

He played a banker who strikes a business deal with Matthew McConaughey’s character Kenny Wells in Stephen Gaghan’s Gold.

Watching McConaughey freestyle for a month in Thailand “was a great reminder that, in this digital age, we’re no longer ‘wasting film’. That it’s worth it to try anything once,” Patel stated.

Patel is committed to stage. “There are no questions like why a first-generation Indian-American can play Hamlet while his father, King Hamlet, is played by a white actor,” he says.

One of his recent highlights is securing an important role as as King Theseus in an adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for Shakespeare in the Park.

“An Indian man gets to play a powerful warrior King who wins the love of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, played by a black actress on a global stage,” Patel said. “It’s going to be glorious.”

His passion for drama began in high school, when he made his performance as crazy Doctor Einstein in a high school adaptation of Arsenic And Old Lace. “For the first time, I felt people noticed me for what was inside of me, rather than the way I looked.”