Baritone Shakti Pherwani is an actor-singer-dancer from Bombay, India with a background in Musical Theater and Opera. Shakti has trained and performed on stages across Europe and continues to expand his repertoire.
Actor-Singer-Dancer
Fortunate to have attended a school that put on a musical production every single year, Shakti started out singing and dancing on stage almost around the same time.
Having won the Junior Level singing competition at school in grade 3, Shakti was encouraged to participate in various cultural events and soon bagged a background dancer part as an elf in the senior school’s musical production based on fables by author Hans Christian Anderson. He was a friend of Thumbelina, and there was simply no looking back!
Participating in various inter-school singing and dancing events, he continually auditioned for the annual musical – sometimes being cast in multiple roles in the same production!
Once a senior, Shakti worked his way up into the speaking roles – cast one year as a friend of Oliver’s at the orphanage [in a local Hindi adaptation of Dickens’ Oliver Twist]; and as Young Scrooge in the musical adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol the next.
When cast in a production of the Fiddler on the Roof – Shakti was not only the singing voice for one of the non-singing senior actors (Tzeitel in ‘Matchmaker, matchmaker’) – but also led the ensemble for all the other musical numbers. Appearing as a pub dancer in the celebratory To Life, To Life, L’chaim! he was part of the production not only off stage as a voice over, but on it as well.
A breakthrough role for Shakti was when he was cast as Scar in a production that adapted the Broadway version of The Lion King. Not only did he act, sing and dance his own part in the production, he was also the singing voice for Pumbaa, the warthog. Being heavily involved in all aspects of the production earned him his first ever Assistant Director credit – and thus began his journey into exploring all aspects of stagecraft.
DICTION COACHING, STAGE TRAINING AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT
For over a decade, Shakti has served in a recurring capacity as Assistant Director for Broadway-inspired student musicals staged at several of India’s leading schools working under the mentorship of Director and Choreographer Salome Roy Kapur.
He has contributed to annual day productions at institutions such as the G D Somani Memorial School (Mumbai), B D Somani International School (Mumbai,) Mayo College (Ajmer), The Rajkumar College (Rajkot), and Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya (Gwalior).
As First Assistant Director, Shakti works closely with students throughout the production process, supporting auditions and guiding actors and singers through language, speech, and diction training. He has assisted in scene direction and performance development, helping students build confidence, clarity, and a deeper understanding of character and storytelling.
His responsibilities have also extended to the technical and musical aspects of each production. He has supervised studio sessions, including the recording and mixing of voice-overs and songs, and has contributed to script adaptations and revisions to ensure suitability for student performers. In addition, he has supported set design and overall production, along with lighting and sound coordination. With a balanced approach to both creative and logistical responsibilities, he has provided vocal direction, overseen musical arrangements, and assisted with background score sourcing where required.
Shakti has had a consistent commitment to nurturing young performers to uphold strong production standards by teaching cast members the importance of reliability, attention to detail, and a collaborative spirit—qualities that raise the standard of performance in each production.
In addition to direction skills, Shakti has a strong technical experience in theatre production, working closely with every production aspect including set and costume design. A reliable show runner, he has experience supervising lighting and sound teams to coordinate cues and ensure smooth performances, managing prompts and backstage coordination with consistency and attention to detail.
An autodidact when it comes to mixing and mastering, he has also served as supervisor for studio sessions of full ensemble song recordings featuring soloists and chorus, as well as voice overs and live-sync dialogue when dealing with open air venues for productions.