Sorab Wadia
Roles: Hussein
Sorab Wadia was born and raised in Bombay, India and now divides his time between India and the USA or wherever on the globe his gigs take him. He is currently starring in a one-man adaptation of The Kite Runner directed by Wynn Handman for The American Place Theatre’s Literature to Life series. It plays in NY and around the USA.
Though he doesn’t play video games, he’s tickled pink to be a character on Grand Theft Auto IV; an Indian pedestrian, who cusses up a storm in Hindi. Kill him if you can find him! In January 2009, Sorab workshopped the role of Asad in Aftermath, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s new docu-drama about Iraq at the New York Theatre Workshop.
In 2007 Wadia created the role of Hussein Al-Mansour in the world premiere of the internationally notorious and much acclaimed Jihad! The Musical at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2007.
The video of Hussein’s show-stopping and catchy number “I Wanna Be Like Osama” was released on YouTube and has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. Check out the links page to pieces on CNN and a live radio broadcast of the song on BBC Radio 4 Scotland. He garnered raves for his performance of Ali Hakim in Trevor Nunn’s production of Oklahoma! on its first national tour of the US.
In 2006 Sorab shot a role in Suburban Girl with Sarah Michelle Gellar and made his US network TV debut in NBC’s 30 Rock. In New York he has created some powerful roles on stage including David Akhmed in Stephanie Liss’ Faces Of War, a powerful, non-fictional play about the Israel-Palestine conflict.
He played Stan in the US premiere of Afro-French writer Koffi Kwahulé’s two-man play Big Shoot at the Lark Theatre.
At the NY International Fringe in 2006 he created roles in another politically charged docu-drama Fear Up: Stories From Bagdad and Guantanamo. Sorab trained as an actor, singer and pianist at such places as The Maggie Flanigan Studio (Meisner Technique) in NY, The Peabody Conservatory, Baltimore, and The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
