We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rakesh Palisetty. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rakesh below.
Rakesh, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I started acting when I was in pursuing my undergraduate studies at the University of Delhi in New Delhi, India. Soon after graduating, I began acting professionally. I believe the impulse or the desire to tell stories was born much earlier however, when I was a child. I used to read a lot and I remember these stories having a profound effect on my imagination. I could picture the people and the worlds they inhabited, and this in turn created not only an intense desire to tell stories, but to be able to live them. That’s what led me to be an actor, and eventually a director.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My name is Rakesh Palisetty, and I am a theater, film, and opera director from New Delhi, currently based in New York. Since the very beginning of my theater career in India, I have possessed a deep connection to work that challenges the status quo, and focuses on re-imagining classics. While I believe this stems from an ever-complex relationship with colonial texts, and what they have meant in my culture and upbringing, my hunger for understanding the thin line between the legacy and betrayal of classic texts only deepened when I moved to New York in 2018 to attend my MFA in Theater Directing at Columbia University. I have found it to be the most important time of my life, as I spent three years sharing ideas with a heavily international and diverse group of collaborators and educators, who pushed each other to question who we were at our core as creators.
I have interrogated and grappled with many questions as I have worked on various projects. And while these questions change and morph depending on the work, some remain the same. I am interested in interrogating why we as human beings do the things we do, and what it means to be human – how creating a piece of theater or film helps us answer those questions. I wonder where the intersection of art and entertainment lies, and am constantly investigating how to create work that is relevant now, as we ingest information via download buttons. How do we reconnect with our souls? Is it through this seemingly constant chase of our darkest thoughts and desires, or is it instead via the route of joy and hope, given the state of the world that we inhabit.
Have you ever had to pivot?
I moved to New York to pursue my MFA in theatre directing at Columbia University, when I was doing quite well as a director back in New Delhi. But I realized then that I wasn’t growing as an artist, and so made the choice to come to New York. While it was a big risk, it was worth the time and effort. It threw me into many situations where I had to work with strangers, pull off shows in matters of days, balance intense work schedules inside and out of school. These challenges forced me to think outside the box and rely wholly on harnessing the power of group collaboration, versus solely developing my individual voice as a director. In short, moving to the US made me redefine my own creative process, and pivot towards work that is thoughtful as well as thought-provoking.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
A lot of my friends who aren’t creatives still wonder why I do this – there is no consistent pay and little monetary security, especially in the beginning, and especially for us immigrants. However, it’s not just because of the money. I guess some people don’t fully understand why someone would suddenly take five steps backwards in their career. I have never cared much for doing things ‘on time’ in life, such as when I would buy my first car or home. The learning experience to me has never been linear, and I simply recognized an opportunity to take five steps back in order to catapult 100 steps forward. This may seem like a cliche idea, but when people are faced with really taking on a significant challenge, riddled with endless immigration paperwork, just to live in a shoe box and be a student all over again with no money for fun activities – they tend to go back to their lives as they know them. I’m in a different place in my life to many of my friends and family, but one really great thing about being a creative is that our love for what we do is so powerful, we just have to find crazy enough ways to tame the beast of creativity in order to ride into success.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rakeshpalisetty.com/
- Instagram: @rakeshpalisetty