Most people who went to watch Present Laughter during its four-month stint on Broadway this year were probably there for Tony-awardee Kevin Kline, hilarious as an ageing matinee idol. Maybe some, like me, came for Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother), playing a seductress in slinky silks.

No one was expecting to be blown away by the ‘crazy playwright’ played by the Indian guy. Yet, there was Bhavesh Patel, pacing around Kline, his nervous histrionics pleasantly clashing with Kline’s elegant artifice, the audience roaring for more of his bouncy banter and wondering, “Who is this guy?”

As the curtain falls at the iconic St James Theatre, I rifle quickly through the playbill and find Patel, on page 14. Meanwhile, back on stage, he and Smulders have broken out into a ‘shimmy dance’ – their version of a victory huddle. Later, I track Patel down in his green room, where he’s unwinding with his glass of rye whiskey, basking in the euphoria that generally follows a high-octane live performance.

“Theatre can be very under the radar,” Patel admits. “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.” The 37-year-old actor has been working the NY theatre circuit for over 14 years. Following gigs at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London and Cincinnati Shakespeare Company in Ohio, Patel got himself an MFA at NYU. Soon enough, he was landing significant roles: in Broadway productions like five-time Tony award-winning War Horse; and off-Broadway shows like Indian Ink, where he plays a first-gen Anglo-Indian with a penchant for lengthy monologues.

Patel was eight when his family of six moved from Chicago to Du Quoin, Illinois. Population, 6,000. Brown people, six. His instinctive pledge for inclusion led him to work his way through school sports teams, until he found his jam, at age 14: his first role, as the crazy Doctor Einstein in the 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.”

In 2008, Patel decided to add television and films to his oeuvre. He did his time as the token Indian on screen: the turban-wearing pharmacist who’s been robbed, on cop drama NYC 22; a doctor on Gossip Girl; a techie on Person Of Interest.

In 2013, Patel landed a recurring arc as a sleazy fourth-year associate in the cult legal drama The Good Wife. And then, in 2016, Patel was cast in Stephen Gaghan’s Gold as a banker who strikes a business deal with Matthew McConaughey’s Kenny Wells. Patel spent a month hanging out with McConaughey in Thailand, watching him freestyle, wildly deviating from the script. “It was a great reminder that, in this digital age, we’re no longer ‘wasting film’. That it’s worth it to try anything once,” he says.

But for the most part, Patel has stuck to the stage, considering himself #blessed for a space this inclusive. “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.

This month, he’s got himself a coveted spot, as King Theseus in an adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for the city’s most awaited theatrical extravaganza – 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 says, moodily swirling what’s left of his drink. “It’s going to be glorious.”

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