Life as a chemical engineer couldn’t be more different from life as an actor.
“One you control everything, two you don’t control anything at all,” says Praneet Akilla with a laugh.
The New Westminster resident is onstage in the new Arts Club Theatre Company production of Cipher, running Feb. 6 to March 7 at the Granville Island stage.
The new Canadian play by Ellen Close and Braden Griffiths – who both also star in the show – drew its inspiration from the famous Somerton Man case in Australia. The still-unsolved case revolves around the body of a well-dressed man found on Dec. 1, 1948 on Somerton Park Beach, just outside of Adelaide, South Australia, with no identification on his body but with a line from a poem on a scrap of paper in his suit.
For Cipher, the playwrights moved the action to Victoria and centred their story on a fictional, 63-year-old Vancouver Island cold case. The plot follows forensic toxicologist Grace Godard (Close), who thinks she is coming close to an answer – but then she meets Aqeel Saleemi (Akilla), a young man with a personal stake in the mystery.
“The whole play is about their journey together and solving the case,” Akilla says, noting the story offers up the excitement of a thriller and murder mystery together with poignant commentary about the world we live in today.
Landing the role is just the latest success for the 26-year-old actor, who has also worked with Bard on the Beach and is currently appearing in the Netflix supernatural drama series October Faction.
It wasn’t where life was originally heading for the Mumbai-born, Calgary-raised Akilla. He originally followed in the footsteps of his engineer father and graduated with a degree in chemical engineering from McGill University. But a year of working as an engineer convinced him that his heart wasn’t in it; instead, he wanted to follow his passion for acting.
He’d always been involved in theatre, he notes – in school plays, musical theatre productions and other artistic endeavours.
“It wasn’t out of nowhere,” he says. “I knew I was good at it. I knew I could do something with it. It was just a matter of me making a decision and going 110% into it.”
He admits his family greeted his decision with some trepidation, and he understands why. He was eight years old when his family moved to Calgary from Kuwait, where his father’s work had taken them, and he knows what it’s like to grow up as an immigrant family.
“You want a stable life; you want to see your kids grow and have a stable life,” he says.
Once his family realized he was serious and that, in fact, he was able to make a career out of acting, they got on board.
“Now they’re overtly supportive, to the point where if there’s a Marvel movie out, they’ll be like, ‘Why aren’t you in it?’” he says, laughing. “It’s very sweet. I find it very endearing. I couldn’t do it without their support.”
Akilla, who didn’t get into the world of acting until he was 24, says he’s been fortunate to work with excellent directors – which, he says, is a particular blessing since he comes into the industry without formal training.
“The theatre community in Vancouver has really embraced me as one of their own, and the same with the film and television industry,” he says. “I’ve been able to learn on the job.”
Akilla notes there are more opportunities than ever before for a person of colour in the industry, since directors and producers are trying harder to have diversity in their stories.
“We’re not even trying to force it; that’s just the world we live in today,” he says.
He still sees room for growth, however – particularly in allowing diversity to happen more naturally.
“I think the goal going forward will be to not tokenize it so much, not to do diversity for the sake of diversity,” he said, pointing out there are many roles for which the colour of an actor’s skin should be irrelevant. “A person like me can be a guy named Tom. He doesn’t have to be Tom from India. … There is a lot more work to be done. It is moving in that direction; I just think it’ll take a few more years to take a more organic approach.”
Once Cipher winds up, Akilla has another major project on the horizon: he’s part of the cast for the Shaw Festival production of Mahabharata this summer. The six-hour, two-part production is based on the Indian epic poem that’s known as the longest poem ever written (for reference, it’s reported to be 10 times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined).
“If you’re part of the South Asian diaspora, you’ve been told the stories,” Akilla says.
This production will be the first ever done with an all-South Asian cast, and it’s been cast with actors from around the world.
Having a chance to be part of it aligns with Akilla’s personal mission moving forward, to choose projects that matter to him as an actor and that allow him to ask the questions: “What does storytelling mean to me? How do I reach out and impact humanity?”
Through it all, Akilla isn’t forgetting just how fortunate he is to have landed where he is now.
“I never want to lose sight of the fact that I’m grateful to be a working full-time actor,” he says. “That’s the jackpot right there.”
CHECK IT OUT
What: Cipher, a new Canadian mystery by Ellen Close and Braden Griffiths, co-produced by Arts Club Theatre Company and Calgary’s Vertigo Theatre
When: Feb. 6 to March 7, with shows Mondays through Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., plus matinees on Wednesdays at 1:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 2 p.m. (Closed Sundays.)
Where: Granville Island Stage, 1585 Johnston St.
Tickets: Starting at $29. See www.artsclub.com or call the box office at 604-687-1644.
