Watching Prakash Mohandas direct cast members for his upcoming production, “Om Shanti — Once upon a Time in Bollywood,” it is hard to believe engineering was his mainstay up until a few months ago.
The actor, dancer, musician and filmmaker is obviously in his realm on the stage, but Mohandas is also a successful entrepreneur. He is founder and CEO of Agni Entertainment, the burgeoning film and theater company which produces, promotes and distributes independent film and theater projects with a South Asian focus.
“Coming from India, I never thought that all of my artistic interests could be translated into a profession,” he said. “I think one of the things the U.S. has taught me is that anything can be a profession if you are really passionate about it, provided that you put in some thought about how you can make that passion of yours monetarily viable.”
Mohandas’ passion for the arts came at an early age. He began learning hip hop and jazz in India at age 6. When he was 11, he took up Indian classical music. He also participated in theater throughout school and continued to pursue dance, theater and music during his undergraduate studies.
“Most of my artistic abilities came from my early education in India,” he said. “But culturally, the community has a stigma against artistic careers; they aren’t considered lucrative enough to make a living. Culturally, I was raised to go toward a path of engineering, medicine, law or an MBA.”
Mohandas left India to attend graduate school in engineering at The University of Texas. Engineering was never something Mohandas questioned; instead, he said he followed suit with many of his peers and moved to the U.S. to pursue his graduate studies.
“Over there, all my artistic interests were considered hobbies — even through I was really passionate about them, I never thought of them as a career path,” he said.
But while he was an engineering student at UT, Mohandas continued his artistic interests, participating in an a capella group, a fusion music band, a theater group and a dance company. After he earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering, he worked at AMD from 2007 to 2011 and then at Dell Inc. until March. While he was working as an engineer, he was also growing his passion into a business.
“Getting the company up to this point and making it financially viable has been a slow five-year journey,” he said. “For five years it was a juggling process, balancing two careers.”
Mohandas started Agni Dance, an academy focused on teaching Bollywood dance that grew from 10 students in one location to 200 students in five locations.
“What that did was create a lot of credibility to the community that Agni is a professional company and can coordinate on larger scale,” he said.
For several years, Mohandas worked solely on the dance academy, but in 2010 he started Agni Entertainment which presented its first theater production in 2011. Today, Agni Entertainment has blossomed into a touring production company that has produced six theater and film projects and will perform its largest next month. “Om Shanti — Once upon a Time in Bollywood” is an English musical with a 150-member cast and crew performing its first round of shows at the Long Center for the Performing Arts on Aug. 23-25, followed by shows in Houston and Dallas.
Agni, which means fire, seems to be a fitting name for a company started by Mohandas. He said it indicates the level of passion he and those in his company share for the arts. Mohandas’ goal is to take his musical and theater productions across the United States and he said he would like to eventually take the film aspect of the business global.
Agni Entertainment aims to establish the missing links in the South Asian film industry in countries outside Asia, yet its productions appeal to a wide audience. He said about 80 percent of the audience and 80 percent of the cast and crew are non-Asian.
“We are a very multicultural cast,” he said. “No matter where you are from, you can digest this and find it entertaining.”
Mohandas said he is thankful for the stable career engineering provided as he transitioned his creative passions into a living.
“Ultimately I think the real joy has come from being able to make that jump,” he said. “Now I can truly say I love my job.”
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