Rohit Chokhani has spent his entire career bridging different worlds.
First, despite a passion for the arts, Chokhani uprooted himself from the vibrant, sweltering embrace of Mumbai for the relatively staid climes of Boston to pursue his master’s degree in computer science.
Then, seeking a more creative outlet, he transitioned a relatively dry technical degree into the design and management of video games, which brought him into contact with companies like Fox, Pixar and Disney, and rocketed him into multicultural boot camp as a project manager for teams in the US, India and China.
Then, in 2010, Chokhani decided to move from Boston to Vancouver on the encouragement of an uncle, where his career path would change entirely again.
Determined to find footing in the film industry or something similar, Chokhani saved up enough money before coming to Vancouver to wait for the right opportunity. In the meantime, he volunteered, wrote his own plays, and created an arts program at his local temple.
Eventually, and somewhat by chance, he networked his way into an unpaid production management position on the 2011 Fringe hit, Siddhartha: the Journey Home.
“It was a very East Vancouver, kind of, hippie-collective environment. Nobody was getting paid, everybody was doing everything,” he recalls, with a laugh. “But what they had was very unique: a great script […], some really good names attached, and they had the Sun Yat-Sen Garden as their venue.”
It was at this point that his talents coalesced. The play had local audiences clamouring for tickets, and took home Talk of the Fringe that year. Meanwhile, for a boy who grew up organizing community events and watching Bollywood films on his neighbourhood’s lone television set, Siddhartha unlocked a world that kids his age in India were often told wasn’t a career at all.
“I didn’t even know I would have an arts career,” Chokhani explains. “I was raised like the typical Indian kid. Things have changed since then, but [...] nobody really taught that you could have a career in the arts. [The arts were] always extra-curricular activities, and you were raised in a culture that said be a doctor, engineer or lawyer.”
Since then, Chokhani has joined the ranks of Vancouver’s in-demand artistic voices, having served as general manager for Urban Ink and Touchstone Theatre, producer-in-residence for the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, and, this year, as an apprentice director for Bard on the Beach’s production of Merry Wives of Windsor.
Most significantly, though, Chokhani continues to bridge multicultural borders as the artistic producer of Diwali Festival (Oct. 11-Nov. 30), one of the Lower Mainland’s largest celebrations of Diwali. A global, multi-faceted South Asian holiday, Diwali could be described as Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s rolled into one.
Historically, the Vancouver festival has focused on showcasing music, dance and food from the Indian culture. In the four years under Chokhani and team, however, it has expanded in size (with events now in Surrey, Richmond and Coquitlam) and scope, adding fashion, yoga and theatre to the lineup – the latter in partnership with the Cultch.
Chokhani says his goal was to present shows that “no one in Canada has ever seen”, and Diwali’s theatrical debut, Yaël Farber’s Nirbhaya, drew audiences from across the spectrum last year. The play depicted the horrific 2012 gang rape of 23-year-old Delhi student Jyoti Singh, alongside testimonials from rape survivors.
It was a raw, emotionally challenging experience for its viewers, and a timely yet risky production. Building on its many successes, though, Chokhani has quadrupled Diwali’s theatre offerings this year.
“The theatre program at Diwali fest has completely exploded,” Chokhani says. “People in mainstream theatre saw what we created with the Cultch and saw the potential for South Asian content, not just for South Asians but for people at large.”
This year, audiences can lose themselves in The Elephant Wrestler (Nov. 1-5 at the Cultch), which follows a poor chai-wallah, or tea seller, as he investigates the mysteries of life; Carousel Theatre for Young People’s Sultans of the Street, about street kids dreaming of a better life (Oct. 29-Nov. 13 at Waterfront Theatre); Brothel #9, about the cost of human trafficking (Nov. 17-27 at the Cultch); and then the big ticket, Piya Behrupiya, a mammoth adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (Oct. 11-22 at the York), in Hindi with English surtitles.
Commissioned by London’s Globe Theatre and created by The Company Theatre in Mumbai, Piya Behrupiya is as exciting as it is unlikely: a Bollywood-meets-Shakespeare musical adaptation.
“It’s a big deal for me because no one has done a show of that magnitude in a language that is not French or English,” says Chokhani. “And to bring 16 actors from India and to do a show that is based on Twelfth Night, it’s really a remarkable landmark for me, and also Diwali Fest, to make theatre accessible in that way.”
Diwali Festival runs Oct. 11-Nov. 30 at various venues. Tickets at DiwaliFest.ca
