We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Manvi Ranghar. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Manvi below.

Manvi, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I think more necessary and somehow harder is to meet your soul. And you have to live in order to meet it. I love the writer Benjamín Labatut’s insight that in order to let something bigger than you come through, you have to let the world in. And you have to do so long before the work itself. It means that you might end up in the marshes, meet predators you weren’t prepared to confront. It means getting your hands dirty. It means castles and snake pits. It means detours, dead ends, cults, crisis, ragged wandering and terrifying success. It means losing your soul to find it.To me, learning the craft is learning to live deeply. Don’t listen to anyone else. Even if other people believe something but you don’t believe it, don’t do it. To hear the dying cries of orthodoxy, you must believe yourself first. It takes courage to stare down illegitimate hierarchies. To not obey. To not bow. I had to learn this lesson the hard way. Be true to yourself and be true to your limited life, and art will pour out effortlessly from this integrity. Believe in your right to live, feel and create. Don’t worry about being good or bad. Find something only you can articulate. Make authentic art.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I was born in Mumbai and studied at a Krishnamurti school. At twenty, I founded Kani, a cultural gathering. Two days long, with sixteen events, it was designed to move people past their fear into freedom and creative expression. We raised a blessed amount of funding and the gathering still takes place each year. I then worked as an actress for the theatre company The Mirror Merchants and acted in national commercials.

From there, I moved to a reforestation NGO and community living project. We taught unschooling, non violent communication, reforested 70 acres of land and learned water conservation. I helped with the administration of their work in India, Haiti and Kenya. In transitioning out, I began working as an academic editor, which allowed me to travel light, alone and in nature, encountering people and projects across fifteen countries.

I then worked as a theatre critic, was a member of the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC) and represented India at the Bergman Festival in Sweden. I moved to Goa, and worked with the filmmaker Anand Gandhi at Memesys Culture Lab. Being part of a project, as a writer and actor, from proof of concept to the internationally streamed Hulu TV show ‘OK Computer’ was film school. I then received a scholarship from the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute and came to study Method Acting in New York. Here, I wrote a graphic novel, a full length play, directed my own films and began selling my paintings. Through mud and confusion, I always found my way back to my real heart. I will not die an unlived life.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The freedom. Not merely the freedom of time and space, but the freedom of thought and feeling. A blank canvas, a well run set, a fresh page are infinite, safe, honoring of subjectivity, requiring no obedience and no hierarchy. This inner freedom is the treasure that makes one truly independent.

Nicole Krauss said art is the place where life has a chance at meaning. An artist’s life has many pragmatic landmines. But creativity as a process, practice and permission is free. It is to stand in the middle of a chessboard and ignore the squares. Having taken many strange roads in my life, I have come to see authenticity as a high virtue. A sign of health and a great defense in a world that is moving steadily towards control and manipulation. Art is a great act of anarchy.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.manviranghar.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/manviranghar/
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/manvi-ranghar-18b43815b
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQRMl3fMY-8&t=11s
• Other: https://www.backstage.com/u/manvi-ranghar/ https://newyorkpostdaily.com/from-self-discovery-to-sovereignty-manvi-ranghars-journey-to-the-heart-of-art-and-life/

Image Credits
Manvi Ranghar.