About us
ALTER EGO is a non-profit group focusing on cutting-edge modern Indo-American Theater with a universal message. Alter Ego is unique to other theater companies as it is a team of talented New York professionals with a corporate identity by day that use "Alter Ego" as a platform to moonlight as theater artists to express their artistic vision.
Founding members
Bhavna Thakur
Bhavna is the founder and artistic director of Alter Ego Productions. A securities and mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison she has a LLM from Columbia University School of Law and a J.D. from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore.
Theatre Experience: Acted as Martha in Joseph Kesserling's Arsenic and Old Lace, Hortense in Maxwell Anderson's Bad Seed, Hattie in Peter Coke's Breath of Spring, the Countess in Woody Allen's Don't Drink the Water and participated in various inter and intra school play festivals. While at college, acted in Mahesh Dattani's Where there is a Will and was involved in various workshops and productions with him. Directed Peter Brook's Mahabharata, Jean Anouilh's Antigone and Terence McNally's A Perfect Ganesh in Bangalore. Acted in and directed various college plays like Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit (Madame Arcati), Joyce Carol Oates's Eclipse (Mother), Ayn Rand's Night of January the 16th (Miss Svenson) and various productions of street theater for the Legal Education through Theater Enterprise. Acted as Sunita in Anuvab Pal's Chaos Theory and directed Girish Karnad's Hayavadana and Anuvab Pal's Chaos Theory for Alter Ego Productions.
Nilay Oza
After completing a Masters in Building Technology from M.I.T, Nilay began working for James Carpenter Design with a design focus on structural glass. He recently completed work on AOL Time Warner Development on Columbus Circle. His theater experience includes set design for both stage productions and collapsible structures for the traveling street theater troupe for the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust in India. He currently works for the Brown Group of Companies, a prominent real estate development company, developing high end houses built by prominent architects, for wealthy clients.
Producers for Alter Ego's 2006 play, " A First Class Man' by David Freeman
Puja Ogale
Puja has been a member of Alter Ego for three years and worked on props for Chaos Theory, as Stage Manager on Indian Wants the Bronx, and as Assistant Producer on Indian Ink and Fatwa. She enjoys both production and acting. Her educational background is in Communications and Business and she currently works in marketing for Apple Core Hotels in New York.
Seema Malik
Seema is an architect at Robert A.M. Stern, New York. She recently received her Masters in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University. She has been a part of AlterEgo Productions for the last three years. She has worked in the capacity of a set designer for "Indian Ink", production manager for "Fatwa", and acted in "Whose Afraid of Vijay Tendulkar?" This time round she has decided to add to her theatrical repertoire by co-producing AlterEgo’s latest venture, “A First Class Man.”
Prashant Vijay
By day, Prashant Vijay works at Goldman Sachs in Technology for the Commodities Trading Desk. His night-time alter-ego "Vijay Prashant" has been a part of Alter-Ego productions since 2002. He has acted in Chaos Theory by Anuvab Pal in 2002 and in Indian Ink by Tom Stoppard in 2003. He has been involved in various roles in the productions of both those plays, as well as Fatwa by Anuvab Pal, in 2004. He attended Modern School in New Delhi, and was a part of many productions there. He graduated from Tulane University in 2001, with a degree in Computer Science.
Alter Ego members
Reshma Patel
Reshma is a life-long left brainer, graduated from MIT and is a Managing Director at Bear Stearns. After moving to New York, she discovered an interest in the arts and has been with Alter Ego since its formation. For Indian Ink, she was assistant stage manager and helped with fundraising. She helped with publicity for both Indian Ink and Fatwa. She dabbled as a costume designer for Chaos Theory.
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Akshay Damarla
Akshay is a Computer Programmer at Bloomberg Financial Markets by day who likes to maximize his time outside of work experiencing the diverse culture unique only to the City of New York. This is his second tryst with Alter Ego
and one of many more exciting ones to follow.
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Saad Tabani
Saad is an underemployed actor and percussionist. Facing limited career growth prospects as (the real-life) Spider- Man he began pursuing an MBA at NYU's Stern School of Business. He juggles that with a day job at IBM Software. Saad is involved with AlterEgo to get exposure and experience with theater. He plans to use that to bring Spider-Man to Broadway.
Tarika Daftary
Tarika is currently working on her doctorate in Forensic Psychology from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and teaching undergraduate psychology classes. She has acted and worked on sets in a few high school productions, and this is her first year with Alter Ego.
Beatrice Ramnarine
Beatrice Ramnarine is an Interior Design Graduate from Parsons School of Design and is currently working for Houses at Sagaponac, a residential development of the Brown Companies. A strong interest in Costume and Set
Design has jump started her involvement with Alter Ego Productions. This is her first theatre production.
Mitun Sinha
Mitun Sinha joined Alter Ego after being invited to have a one-second role strumming a tune in Chaos Theory. He works at Goldman Sachs on the Global Derivatives technology team, and moonlights as a guitarist and sound
designer in the greatest band ever ..imagined
Ashwin Gonibeed
A native of Madras, Ashwin grew up being greatly influenced by two icons of the 20th century - Rajnikanth and Hugh Hefner. In high school, he indulged his passion for theatre by playing critically acclaimed roles such as -
third guy from the right in a scene from Othello. As he got out of college and joined the work-force he began contemplating on the meaning of life. He gave up on this endeavor after joining Alter Ego - when he finally got a
life. In the past, he has played numerous pivotal roles in the organization such as publicity as well as other production related work. A trained Hindustani vocalist, Ashwin has also performed publicly at the Indian
Consulate in NY and Union Square park. Currently Ashwin works at T-Mobile.