Multifarious Gujarati theatre personality, Latesh Shah, has donned many hats including actor, writer, director, producer and also philanthropist. As of now, Shah is gung-ho with plans to explore Bollywood with a Hindi film titled ‘Chitkar’. The film is slated to be released in 2012.
Shah enjoys a wide fan following in the Gujarati drama circuit. His plays enjoy good public response. Since he caters to the audience’s taste with modern thoughts with a social message. Shah is a contender of a record of 21 shows in 24 hours (45 minutes each) in Mumbai. His powerful subjects have been lauded even by famous personalities like former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Vijayalaxmi Pandit and Shekhar Kapoor.
Thanks to the great public support, Shah’s ongoing Gujarati drama, ‘Ek Aham Ni Rani’, has completed 30 houseful show. The play has also bagged an award. Very soon it will be staged in the US and the UK. Also, a Marathi and Hindi version of the play is on the cards.
Similarly, Shah’s Gujarati drama ‘Chitkar’ hold world record of 800 performance. “Very soon this psycho-social drama will be made into a Hindi feature film. Talks are held with ace directors including Madhur Bhandarkar. Most probably, Irfan Khan would play the lead,” he informed.
Shah has signed up lead actors and the film should hit the screens in 2012. Also to reach a wide audience, Shah plans to dub the play into English, Gujarati, Kannada, Marwari, Sindhi and other regional languages.
Latesh Shah is married to former actor Sujata Mehta (screen name). In fact, he had already worked with famous actors like Paresh Raval, Shafi Inamdar, Tabu, Raveena Tandon and Supriya Pathak.
In 2003, Shah started World Human Development Center (WHDC), as the founder-chairman, with the intention of giving back something to the society and to serve humanity.
Being the World Peace Ambassador, he plans to open around 10,000 centers all over the world and motivate at least 60 crore people by 2024.
The WHDC has centres in Mumbai, Surat, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Nairobi, Kisumu (in Kenya), UAE, Bangkok, Tokyo and New Zealand. We had discussions with various international motivational leaders including Bruce Gordon of US and Linda Cruise of UK and very soon his organization will have ties for setting up centres in third world countries.
WHDC plans to open centers into Asean, African and European countries including Australia, Italy, Malaysia, UK and the US.