Suhaas Ahuja

Suhaas Ahuja hails from a family of theatre practitioners and has been doing theatre since his childhood. He graduated in Film Studies from Middlebury College, Vermont, USA. After returning to his hometown Chennai and briefly working behind the camera, Suhaas started working as a VJ on a local music channel called Southern Spice Music, during which time he also starred as the lead of an Indian-English romantic comedy called Knock Knock, I’m Looking To Marry! (2003). He moved to Mumbai in 2005 and worked as an assistant director on films & TV while also doing theatre with the prestigious The Company Theatre, after which he worked as a full-time composer for some years. In 2011, he was cast as Sanjay Kejriwal, a very crucial character in Talaash (2012). A period of prolific theatre work followed, in which he worked on some highly anticipated theatre productions, such as Sunil Shanbag’s adaptation of Carmen, “Club Desire” (2013-17) (on which he also worked as composer), and the high-profile Indo-French theatre collaboration “Gates to India Song” (2013), directed by Eric Vigner. The QTP production of “A Peasant of El Salvador” directed by Quasar Thakore-Padamsee also opened in 2013, and continues to run till this day. In 2013, most notably for his turn as the Vice-Consul of Lahore in “Gates to India Song”, he made the Stage Impressions Special Mentions list for his work in English theatre. In 2014, he played the role of Thomas, the doomed protagonist of Mike Bartlett’s vicious play “Bull”, directed by Jim Sarbh. More recently, aided by his skills as a singer, he was cast as Matt of the Mint in Motley’s production of “The Threepenny Opera”, directed by Imaad Shah. His next theatre production was an adaptation of Agatha Christie's "The Mirror Crack'd" helmed by the award-winning director Melly Still from the UK, in which he featured in a cast headed by Sonali Kulkarni and Shernaz Patel.

Suhaas has continued to work steadily in film & TV, with credits such as Katti Batti (2015) and Tu Hai Mera Sunday (2017); as well as the TV shows “Bahu Hamari Rajni_Kant” (2016-17), a popular sitcom, & “POW: Bandi Yuddh Ke” (2016-17). The latter was a high-profile TV show that was the official Indian adaptation of the Israeli TV show “Hatufim” (of which, more famously, “Homeland” is the American adaptation). Suhaas gained a lot of appreciation & recognition for his role as Salim Khan. In 2018, a short film that he acted in called Marilyn Lights began to do the rounds of film festivals across the world, and for his work as the protagonist Suhaas bagged four Best Actor awards at various festivals. A fair amount of OTT web series work premiered in 2019, such as Endemol Shine's "MOM: Mission Over Mars" on ALT Balaji, BBC's "Out Of Love" on Hotstar and TVF's "Cheesecake", on MX Player. Ever since shooting has resumed after the pandemic-related lockdowns, Suhaas has shot the second season of "Out Of Love", as well as ALT Balaji's new web series "The Married Woman", which began streaming March 8 onwards on ALT Balaji and Zee5 Premium. Suhaas has won accolades for his role as the patriarchal, entitled Indian everyman Hemant Kapoor.

In 2017, Suhaas started performing his original songs as a singer-songwriter, forming The Suhaas Ahuja Band in June. The band plays gigs featuring songs written, composed and arranged by him. In April 2019, his song “Phantom In The Fog” was selected as one of 24 finalists from over 1000 entries across India for the Nexa Music Lounge, a competition for identifying world-class Indian English songwriting talent, by a jury comprising stalwarts A. R. Rahman and Clinton Cerejo. Currently, the band is working towards putting together its debut full-length album of songs composed and written by Suhaas.
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