COVER STORY
poorna jagannathan
A SOHO GIRL
She's smart, petite, and full of life. After a successful first season of "Damage Control," a reality show on MTV, Poorna Jagannathan is all excited about the second. But after that what? She talks to Geetanjali Sen about the challenge of being a South Asian actor, however smart, petite and full of life you may be. more

There are days, and then there are days.

Some days are filled with excited anticipation in the company of friends and fellow actors, a blur of readings and rehearsals, emotions and outbursts, the face paint, the arc lights and, finally, as the curtain goes down, the thunder of an ovation. Then, the celebration of another success.

Other days are spent sitting by the phone, waiting for a casting call for that role you have your heart set on, laboriously working on a script, or scouting for other job opportunities. All the while, gripped by the feeling that your role of choice might not materialize and the only way your prized script will ever see the light of day is if you produce it yourself.

Life as an actor has its ups and downs. When you are a minority actor, it's even tougher. Poorna Jagannathan is fully aware of that. Yet, such is her passion for her craft, that she can't think of anything else she'd rather do.

The New York-based actor, fresh off the first season of MTV's "Damage Control," is really excited about the next installment of the show, mostly because she had a ball doing the first season.

"Damage Control" is a reality show, somewhat like the more popular Ashton Kutcher-anchored "Punk'd." Hidden cameras focus on a teen whose house is up for sale and cast members take turns to view the house and come up with often-outlandish schemes just to see how far the teen will go to close the sale. And, yes, the parents are in on the gag.

"The script was really funny," Jagannathan says, having overcome her initial prejudice against reality TV. "It's a lot of improv. We prepare for each outcome (during rehearsals). It's four times the work and it's four times the fun." One of the biggest challenges is not to blow the whole show - keep the unsuspecting teen within the range of the hidden cameras, make outlandish requests to get the laughs but be subtle enough so the teen doesn't get suspicious.

Jagannathan and co-star Rizwan Manji play a yuppie couple on the show, often breaking into Hindi to add authenticity to their roles. For her, just being on MTV is a plus. "It reaches a demographic that South Asians don't usually reach. I don't know of any South Asians on MTV," she tells Indian Life & Style.

"I think MTV realizes their audience is multicultural and you see them making intelligent casting choices," Jagannathan says, pointing to how most networks that do have scenes for South Asians tend to typecast them as doctors. She should know. She's had to audition for many such parts.

"Get the defibrillator. Clear." That was the dialogue she was given at a recent audition. "It's so boring," she adds, venting her frustration with the lack of roles for South Asian actors in the mainstream. "But you know, the truth is, even this (role) is a big deal. That's how sad it is. And it pays the bills."

That even two-bit roles are few and far between is the bitter truth most South Asian actors have to deal with. (Three South Asian actors have, however, landed recurring roles on primetime TV: Ravi Kumar on "Crossing Jordan," Naveen Andrews on "Lost," and Parminder Nagra on "ER.") It's not easy, Jagannathan says. "It really feels like even though you want to really express yourself, you can't. That there is someone controlling that and it's very frustrating."

Then you have the proverbial rejections. A simple phone call dashing your hopes telling you they went with someone else but they really liked you. "As an actor you start detaching yourself from some of the outcomes of your auditions," Jagannathan explains. "But when you love the script so much, and you love the writer and you know you did a good job, it takes a bit longer to get over it. But then something else comes along and you move on."

Moving on and dealing with the consequent changes is a lesson Jagannathan learned early in her life. Born in Tunis, Tunisia, in an Indian Foreign Service officer's family, she has experienced life on the move, having grown up in Dublin, Islamabad, Buenos Aires, Brasilia, New Delhi and Washington.

While her globetrotting childhood imbued her with a sense of detachment, it also broadened her outlook and gave her the ability to adapt to situations that, in her own words, were "horrifying" and "awful." Yet, she is thankful for that experience.

"I think what it does when you travel around is, it makes you aware of other people and you are always trying to fit in all the time, so you're changing personalities all the time," she says. "So I think just in terms of beginning acting training, that's where you pick it up."

Growing up under the strict eye of Irish nuns in her Dublin school, Jagannathan got an early introduction to the harsh realities of life - during the family's frequent visits to England, her father would have racial epithets hurled at him. Once, he even got mugged.

The next port of call, Islamabad, was largely a pleasant change, except for the fact that the Indian family was constantly under surveillance. Despite the tensions, her memories are happy - the beauty of Ireland, the cultural affinity in Pakistan, even the friendly "uncle jis" who'd follow the family around and keep tabs on the children's activities.

Then the Jagannathans moved to South America - specifically, Argentina and Brazil. It was here Jagannathan encountered what she calls her "first big cultural divide." Not only was she the only person of color at her school, she also had to do sports - rugby, soccer, hockey, track.

"In the Pakistani system, or the Indian system, your education, how much you study, how smart you are, how respectful you are, is really valued, and then you go to a country where only sports is valued, where being rebellious is valued," she recalls of the move to Argentina. "For the first time, you come across what

it is like to be a nerd - how something that's so valued in the Indian society is so devalued in the West. It was just awful."

To fit in, Jagannathan rebelled and decided never to touch a study book. But she never got around to giving a sports performance worthy of recall. She did, however, develop a love for soccer and still roots for the Brazilian team and soccer star Ronaldinho.

Just as she was getting used to living in the West, the family was transferred to New Delhi, where she was initially enrolled in a school run by the Tamil community. A school that had salwar-kameez as its uniform, where male and female students were segregated, and the entire emphasis was on studies.

"They were so conservative at that school," Jagannathan says, recalling her disastrous first day - she was fined for not wearing a slip below her kameez, she shocked everyone by breaking the strict gender divide in class and, above all, she was completely clueless about what was being taught in class.

"In India you're required to just memorize things. You're told what to write and you don't understand what's happening; it's based on quantity and how many pages you write and it's a totally different system," she recalls. " I had guide books for everything and I used to cheat all the time."

A survivor of perhaps one of the toughest schooling systems - she took and cleared both the fearful high school board exams - Jagannathan has mixed feelings about India. Like any girl who has grown up in Delhi, she is not unaware of the lewd glances and comments and surreptitious touches while traveling on the infamous Delhi Transport Corporation buses.

But more recently, she's come face to face with the corruption and bureaucracy that is so much a part of daily life in that country. "My dad passed away recently (in Chennai) and I saw a level of bureaucracy that I've never seen before. Even for something as just to even see him in the morgue, we had to pay a bribe," she recalls. "You just feel so compromised at a fundamental level. I'm sure there is corruption here, but I just don't come across it everyday at such a basic level."

Yet, even in New York City, Jagannathan is surrounded by India. From her penchant for masala chai to the handicrafts that adorn the walls of her SoHo apartment to the big brass Ganesh that welcomes guests, to her Indian friends, to her acting career, hints of India are everywhere.

Jagannathan moved to the United States from India when her father was posted to the Embassy in Washington. She enrolled at the University of Maryland and opted to major in journalism with a minor in theater, little knowing that her minor would soon become the major obsession in her life.

While in college Jagannathan was active in an improvisation troupe. After finishing, she moved to New York City, took a job in advertising, but continued to act in plays "way, way off Broadway." It took her some time to realize that acting was what she really wanted to do. When she finally had her epiphany, she decided to do some formal training - stints at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Actor's Studio.

Then, as the famous Dickens opening line goes, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

With little money and fewer roles, Jagannathan struggled to make ends meet - for starters she rented out the two rooms in her apartment and moved to the couch. She scoured "Backstage," the favorite of struggling actors, attended auditions, stood in lines for hours and, if she got lucky, even got a paying role.

Luck, it seems, was on her side. She got a break with the lead role in East West Players' "Queen of the Remote Control," which was staged in Los Angeles and got her some good reviews, turning despair into ecstasy and giving her the first real high of her professional career. She then was lucky enough to get a role in "Law and Order" and a Spike Lee film. At the same time, a talent agency agreed to take her on. "I got lucky," Jagannathan admits candidly. "It's really a Catch 22 because no one will even see you without a manager or an agent, and no agent or manager will take you on if you don't have work (to your credit)."

At around the same time, the cause of Indian theater got a major boost with the New York-based Indo-American Arts Council's introduction of the first IAAC Playwrights Festival: The Indian Diaspora, an annual event that seeks to showcase the work of Indian American actors, writers, directors and producers.

"When we presented the first Playwrights Festival in 2001, there were no other South Asian theater companies, and South Asian actors were not recognized at all," says Aroon Shivdasani, the council's executive director. "Since then, there has been a gradual movement toward taking Indian actors out of their pigeon holes, out of the stock 'ethnic' roles, and giving them a chance to prove their merit in regular roles - playing real people in everyday situations."

Jagannathan, who has participated in the festival before and was there again in June when the plays were staged, concedes the festival is a major event in the Indian American theatrical calendar. Besides the festival, she is involved in a workshop headed by actor and cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey who is adapting Anton Chekov's "Three Sisters." Jagannathan is also writing a script for a project loosely based on the popular British comedy, "Goodness Gracious Me," and is giving final touches to another script involving a South Asian character with an eating disorder.

There are two reasons why, the actor says, she had decided to move on beyond acting. Firstly, there is a chronic shortage of roles for South Asians and no one's going to go out of their way to create such openings. Instead of merely sitting around watching their talent go to waste, the acting community must seek to empower itself. Secondly, a large body of Indian American work seems to deal with identity issues that Jagannathan finds very limiting.

"Don't get me wrong, I don't want to slam identity films because they are the first step, but I feel there are so many stories that are out there that are so pertinent, so specifically cultural and yet they're human as well," she says. "There's a lot going on in the Indian community other than the identity crisis - there's power struggles, there's relationships with your parents, your siblings, there's aging..."

At this point, comparisons with the Hispanic community are inevitable. Several years ago, that community, too, was struggling to make inroads into the mainstream. Maybe, in a few years, the Indian community, too, will have achieved a viable presence.

"Acceptance of Indians on stage and screen is gradual, but positive. Indian actors have proven they can play a variety of ethnicities and characters - their talent is being recognized - slowly but surely," Shivdasani asserts. "Poorna and many of her contemporaries are wonderful actors and deserve to be seen in mainstream theater."

And where does Jagannathan see herself in a few years? "More and more, I see myself writing. I see myself understanding what it is about acting that makes me so happy and pursuing that - whatever that may be," she says.