Pravesh Kumar MBE Interview | Frankie Goes To Bollywood | Rifco Theatre Company | Filme Shilmy

Pravesh Kumar MBE, director of the musical Frankie Goes To Bollywood speaks about the upcoming production and championing the contemporary South Asian voice in British Theatre.
Frankie Goes To Bollywood is a spectacular all-singing-all-dancing tale of heroes and villains, with all the costumes and the spectacle of a Bollywood feature film. It tells the story of being British in Mumbai and explores what it takes to get to the top. Drawing inspiration from both traditional Hindi music and the best of Western musical theatre, this carefully integrated hybrid is designed to appeal to lovers of the Bollywood genre and also lovers of a good old West End extravaganza. In partnership with Watford Palace Theatre and HOME Manchester, the production is all set to tour the UK in 2024 as an escape to a ‘Billion Colour Love Story’.
Pravesh Kumar MBE is the Artistic Director and Chief Executive of the award-winning Rifco
Theatre Company and he was awarded in the Queens Honours List 2022 for Service to Theatre. He started the company in 2000 to make a different kind of theatre for a community that could not see themselves represented on English stages. He has been at the forefront of bringing new British South Asian audiences into theatres in their thousands, often for the first time, by making
entertaining and accessible theatre. Pravesh has a background in Film and worked in the
commercial Indian film industry, often called Bollywood, for many years. His theatrical directorial
debut was in 2000 with a UK tour of Bollywood - Yet Another Love Story.
Kumar has achieved critical acclaim for Rifco’s productions: Dishoom!, Pyar Actually, Miss Meena & the Masala Queens, Laila The Musical, Britain’s Got Bhangra, Happy Birthday Sunita, It Ain’t All Bollywood, There’s Something About Simmy, Airport 2000, Meri Christmas, Where’s My Desi Soulmate? The Deranged Marriage and Break The Floorboards. His short film Gods on Mountains was nominated for the Satyajit Ray Short Film Award. His short film The Deranged Marriage was selected for the BAFTA-accredited BUFF festival in 2019. Pravesh wrote the book for the acclaimed rap musical, Mushy: Lyrically Speaking. Most recently, Pravesh’s debut feature film Little English, produced by Recourse Productions, plays in selected cinemas in England, based on Rifco’s play There’s Something About Simmy. Selling out many screens all over the country, proving yet again that underrepresented audiences will come out in their thousands when you tell their authentic stories through their own lens. Kumar is writing an ambitious new main-stage musical that will hit the English stages in Spring 2024. He leads the Rifco Associates programme finding new British South Asian voices of the future.
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Anuj Radia is an independent, prominent journalist based in the UK, he founded www.filmeshilmy.com in 2018 and has since evolved into becoming a popular outlet which covers the latest film news, reviews, features and interviews. Over his career, Anuj has interviewed some of the biggest names in Bollywood and Hollywood including Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Rani Mukerji, Priyanka Chopra, Madhuri Dixit, Zachary Levi, Vidya Balan, Riz Ahmed, The Russo Brothers, Gurinder Chadha and many more. He’s also worked with mainstream publications like Deadline Hollywood and covered the prestigious Oscars in 2021. He is vocal about accurate cultural representations in the West, and LGBTQIA+ rights. He has participated in campaigns for mental health awareness. Furthermore, he regularly hosts Q&As for film festivals such as the London Indian Film Festival and the UK Asian Film Festivals, frequently held at the iconic BAFTA 195 and BFI. He has recently widened his experience in television by appearing as a panellist for Zee TV and as a radio presenter.