Bullpen Sessions Episode 76: Ajay Naidu

Ajay Naidu 

On screen, Naidu starred in the cult film Office Space, as well as appearing in films such as K-Pax, Subway Stories, π, Requiem for a Dream, Bad Santa, The War Within, The Guru, Waterborne, and Loins of Punjab Presents. He co-starred as a series regular in the sitcom LateLine and had guest starring roles on the television dramas The Sopranos,The West Wing and Bored to Death. Naidu has been working extensively with musicians from the Asian underground music movement for many years as a breakdancer and an M.C. His vocals have appeared on many records, most notably Talvin Singh's mercury award winner "OK". In 2006, Naidu directed his first feature film Ashes which had its release in 2010 and for which he won Best Actor accolades from the MIACC Film Festival in New York and the London Asian Film Festival. Naidu's most recent theatre credits include The Kid Stays in the Picture at the Royal Court Theatre, The Master and Margarita with Complicite, a world tour of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure with Complicite, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui alongside Al Pacino, directed by Simon McBurney, The Little Flower of East Orange alongside Ellyn Burstyn at New York's Public Theater directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Waiting for Godot at TFANA directed by Arin Arbus. In 2001 Naidu's solo theatre piece Darwaza was a sold-out hit at New York's Labyrinth Theatre, where he is also a member of the company. In 2019, Naidu was awarded the Excellence in Performing Arts Award by Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White.