Interview: 'I Can Only Write From My Experiences': Mohit Mathur on ARE YOU EVEN INDIAN? At Riverside Studios

Mohit Mathur – writer, actor, dancer and theatre maker – studied engineering in his home city of Delhi but shifted to the arts when someone spotted his talent as a dancer. He joined a jazz class, and as they say, the rest is history.

Mathur was one of nine top competitors featured on reality TV show, India's Dancing Superstar, in Mumbai. He moved to London where he obtained a Master's degree from the Drama Centre, making his West End debut at the London Palladium as the lead in Beyond Bollywood. He then appeared in Life of Pi at Wyndham's Theatre. 

Are You Even Indian? – a dance drama about a marriage formed across cultures – won Best Show at last year's Bitesize Festival at Riverside Studios and Highly Recommended Show at the 2026 Brighton Fringe Festival. Mathur will appear alongside Sharon Phull in Are You Even Indian?, returning to Riverside Studios from 17 - 29 November.

BroadwayWorld spoke to Mathur about moving from India to London, his desire to combine dance and drama, and defining what home means to him.

---

You went into the West End at a young age. What was it like?

I was 24 when I came straight from India to be the lead in Beyond Bollywood at the London Palladium. I don’t know if that counts as young, but it was probably only my second trip abroad. I had no idea what the Palladium was or what the West End really meant. All I knew was New York and Broadway. And then, suddenly, I was standing on that stage.

It felt like a dream being in Dressing Room Number One and people waiting at the stage door for autographs. My face was on posters across London and on the sides of the big red buses. I remember being on the London Eye when some tourists turned to me and said, “You’re the Bollywood guy!” For a boy from Delhi that was something else.

What was it like appearing in Life of Pi in the West End?

Life of Pi was a completely different experience from Beyond Bollywood, where I’d come over from India as part of a company of Indian actors and we explored London together as tourists. 

Life of Pi came after I’d trained here. At drama school everyone talked about being in a West End production one day. So, by then I saw the West End very differently.

When I walked into a rehearsal room full of South Asian, Black and East Asian performers in a long-running West End show, it hit me. It wasn’t like the first time, when I’d arrived from India not knowing what it all meant. This time I respected it so much more.

I feel theatre isn’t fully accessible to people of colour, so that was a really proud moment. Life of Pi was an ensemble piece with puppetry at its absolute best. It went on to win Olivier Awards. Seeing our heritage reflected on a platform like that was special.

Why have you decided to include dance in Are You Even Indian? How have you incorporated it with drama?

Honestly, I keep getting asked to do musicals, but I’m an average singer. I trained as a contemporary dancer first and then came to London to train as an actor, so I wanted to make something that brought those two together. That’s why dance is in Are You Even Indian?

There’s a huge love for dancing in South Asian culture. We dance at weddings, at functions and at every party with the whole family joining in. It’s a very big part of being Indian, so it had to be in the show – especially this one asking: how Indian are you?

It’s done very dramaturgically. Leigh Toney, our director, cut out anything that didn’t make sense or didn’t move the story forward. So, the dance/movement is placed very deliberately. When words aren’t enough to express something dancing breaks out.

Tell me about Are You Even Indian? and how you came up with the idea?

It's a dance drama about a British-born Indian woman and an Indian-born man falling in love and getting married. There's a clash between an Indian growing up here and one who didn't grow up in the UK.

I didn't grow up here and can only write from my experiences. I needed to get a woman's experience to understand it from her point-of-view and collaborated with others to include combined experiences. It's all very complex in India and over here when it comes to what's seen as appropriate. What's the right way to wear a sari? And what does home really mean? Some Indians grew up here watching Goodness Gracious Me, which I hadn't heard of. When I first arrived someone told me I was a knob-head and I had to ask what that meant. When asked which cricket team do you support, there's no right answer.

If you can only choose one place, where would you call home?

For the longest time, I said home is where the work is. Wherever the work took me, I’d fall in love with the place and feel at home there.

Now I feel I can pin down two places where I truly feel at home: Mumbai and London. And I think both can exist at the same time.

Maybe home is nothing to do with work. Or maybe it is, because those are the places where I always see myself working. But really, it’s about the warmth of the people and the culture. I’m a boy from Delhi, but Delhi doesn’t feel like home. Mumbai does, because of everything it offers. And London is home for its multiculturalism and finding my own culture somewhere unexpected in the city in places like Tooting, Edgware and Southall, where I love bargaining in shops.

Can you tell me about Sharan Phull appearing with you in Are You Even Indian? at Riversides Studios in November? Is she primarily a dancer, or does she dance and act like yourself?

Sharan's a musical theatre performer trained in jazz, contemporary and Bhangra dance. She’s been in Bend It Like Beckham and Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, and she’s done straight plays as well as musicals.

We needed a performer who's a dancer and actor, and Sharan's a triple threat: she dances, acts and sings. I’m really excited to explore the themes of the show with Sharan.

Are You Even Indian? runs at Riverside Studios from 17 - 29 November