Meet Ray Parikh (Amit)
Have you traveled overseas? Any interesting stories or experiences?
Traveling is one of my true passions, and I have been fortunate enough to be able to do quite a bit of international travel. Along with traveling, I have actually lived for extended periods of time in Buenos Aires, Madrid, and Munich. A few of my favorite moments / experiences:
- Carnival in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil
- Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany
- Running with bulls in Pamplona, Spain
- Cage diving with great white sharks in South Africa
- Rolling cigars in the tobacco fields in Cuba
If you could speak to your unborn child, what piece of advice would you give?
Keep an open mind; learn a foreign language; don’t pop your zits – it’ll leave scars!
What’s your favorite baby picture? Can you share it with us?
From a young age, I enjoyed laying out and working on my tan. I was also a notorious hair curler.
What’s the biggest challenge for you in this production?
One of the biggest challenges is the varying maturity level of Amit throughout the play and particularly trying to understand what it is like to have a limited awareness and understanding of the world. It is interesting to go through the process of limiting your awareness and experiencing learning things for the first time.
What do you connect to in this story?
I can really connect with Suraiya’s desire or need to be an independent woman (i.e. not be shackled by her aunt or a husband), and one of the key’s to independence is education. My grandmother married my grandfather at a very young age, and she was forced to take over running an entire house in which lived a very large joint family – my grandfather’s parents, uncles & aunts, brothers and sister-in-laws, and cousins. She did not have the opportunity to go to college and had to teach herself English along with other subjects in order to be able to help out her daughters with their homework and studies. She made it her mission to ensure that her 4 daughters (one of them being my mom) all received a complete education and could make their own lives and ultimately have the independence that she never was able to have.
What was your first job in theater?
In 6th grade, I was Santa Claus in a play called Shaping Up Santa. (Elementary school is the only time you can get away with having an ethnic Santa!)
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