Soti is an actor, director, educator, acting/movement and voice/speech trainer who hails from Uttar Pradesh, India.
A graduate from the Intercultural Theatre Institute (Singapore) with a Professional Diploma in Intercultural Theatre Acting, Soti has also received a Master of Performing Arts with a distinction in Theatre Arts from the University of Hyderabad, along with a Master of Arts in Hindi from the M.J.P. Rohilkhand University Bareilly, India.
He has received training under the tutelage of internationally reputed and distinguished teachers and directors like Aarne Neme, T. Sasitharan, Phillip Zarilli, Prof. B. Ananthakrishnan, Prof. Ramgopal Bajaj, Mohan Maharishi, Prof. S. Ramanujam, Abhilash Pillai, Marc Weinblatt, Bert Van Dijk, Leela Alaniz, Guillermo Angelelli, Adriano Basegio, Robin Payne, Noushad Mohamed Kunju and Satyabrata Rout.
Skilled with traditional, psycho-physical acting and intercultural performing art forms, Soti has an excellent command of versatility and expression through his repertoire in Bundelkhand Martial Arts (India), Chhau (India), Kalaripayattu (India), Kudiyattam (India), Tai Chi (China), Beijing Opera (China), Noh (Japan) and Wayang Wong (Indonesia), and contemporary practices like Michael Checkhov’s Acting Technique, The Alexander Technique and other physical theatre disciplines.
Most recently, Soti devised and directed a performance – “A Dawn in the Cemetery – Dramatizing India“, and he conceived and devised his own solo performance expressed through psycho-physical theatre, titled Mirrors of the Soul – Memory, History and Trauma and is published in the Contemporary Performance Almanac 2017, the world’s largest contemporary performance network publication in New York, USA. He also received accolades for his role in the Virtuous Burglar, directed by Aarne Neme in 2016. In the same year, he contributed to a performance in Dastak, Singapore’s first Hindi Theatre Festival, for which he received the Best Actor Award for his role in Toba Tek Singh, directed by Edmund Chow. Some of his other stage acting credits with India’s luminary directors include Albert’s Bridge by Mohan Maharishi, Perenium-A Retributive Justice by Abilash Pillai, Reflection by Noushad Mohamad Kunju, and Ephigenia by Satyabrata Rout.
In 2014, he debuted as a director of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in India and went on to further direct and devise contemporary performances of Samwadiya and Thais in in 2017 in Singapore. As a director, Soti draws inspiration from the master metaphor within concepts or patterns; thus, bringing to life connections through the theatrical form. Through analysis of the script, he is able to understand and bring his own consciousness and interpret the text/script in order to make a theatrical entity of the entire production for the audience. Most recently, his directorial work can be seen in A Dawn in the Cemetery: Dramatizing India.
Soti is also the Artistic Director of M.L. Ramanad Theatre Foundation in India, CoFounder/Director of Theatre Incorporate in Singapore and President of Zoom Dance Academy in India. Currently, he works internationally as a freelance artist.