When the spotlight brightened her traditional Indian garb, Rita Sehmi felt something overcome her. She did not feel irony in being the female lead in One-Man Bollywood Show. After all, being a mother herself, she was thrilled to portray the motherly role in the scripted portions of the autobiographical musical portraying the life of an Indian dance choreographer.

Nor did Sehmi feel nerves preventing her from carrying out her role — her first acting gig in nearly two years. Instead, what Sehmi did feel is joy. Her return to the stage was thrilling enough to get the one-time aspiring actress out of her home in Corona and into an audition room with her agent and a production manager. “After doing the show, it made me realize I wanted to get back into Hollywood,” Sehmi said. “It reminded me how much I wanted to act and be on stage.”

While her itch to act only recently resurfaced, Sehmi remembers a time when it was really hard for an Indian-American to find above-the-line work in Hollywood. “It was hard at first, because Indians weren’t as popular,” she said of her earlier attempts to pursue an acting career. Sehmi, who started off in community theater throughout the Inland Empire at the age of 12, found her niche acting in commercials. “I knew I wanted to be in arts since high school, but I wanted to gain business background in college,” Sehmi told Buzzine. Accordingly, she pursued an undergraduate degree in marketing and advertising, as well as an MBA from Cal Poly Pomona.

Balancing her studies with her passions, Sehmi always knew she wanted to be in front of the camera or audience, but also knew her academics would come in handy when she went behind the scenes, in directing or production, for example.

Ironically, her education came in handy in a different way in 2006, when she took a timeout from acting and took on work at a local agency. However, that lasted just a year, and Sehmi completely phased out of Hollywood to become a mother.

Her Hollywood hiatus ended when Nakul Dev Mahajan came knocking on her door. The popular Indian choreographer asked her to play an important role in his staged autobiographical sketch — that of his mother in One-Man Bollywood Show. In playing the mother, Sehmi would reenact moments of Mahajan’s childhood with a 12-year-old actor, Sagar Patel.

Throughout rehearsals, Sehmi bonded with Patel in a mother-son kind of way. She drew upon her recent experience as a mother to make a connection with Patel on stage.

“Coming from a mom’s standpoint, even though it was comical on stage, it definitely had an emotional connection to it,” she said. “He did feel like a son to me. We had this chemistry.”

Yet, beyond the chemistry, Sehmi also related to the show’s very important message –- it is no longer taboo for the Indian-American youth to aspire to be in the arts. As a member of Mahajan’s dance studio for seven years, it was a message she was more than happy to deliver to the audience and community at large. “I still think there is a taboo to it, in terms of Indians in alternate professions,” Sehmi said, pointing out the common phenomenon in Indian-American households, where parents often urge their children to pursue careers in medicine, law, business, or engineering simply for public image or financial safety (or both). By analogy, Sehmi discussed her own mother’s reaction to the young actress’s pursuit of an artistic career. “My mom has been supportive about me being in the arts,” she said. “But she was concerned whether I could make a career of it. She wasn’t really worried about what others thought.”

While she did admit there is still some taboo within the Indian-American community for pursuing a “non-traditional” career in the arts, Sehmi hopes she can inspire the next generation of Indian-American youth to take advantage of opportunities she did not have when she was growing up. “I think we as Indians need an outlet where we can learn our craft,” Sehmi said. “There are so many kids [who] want to get into Hollywood or the arts but don’t know how. I want to be able to make sure that those kids do know where to go.”

To that end, Sehmi talked about taking on more significant roles in acting in order to increase her presence to others and create awareness of the avenues available to South Asians to pursue a career in the arts.

Until then, Sehmi, who prefers stage acting to screen acting, is going to work on her craft and get reacquainted with an old friend named Hollywood.