Although her family focused on sports, Chetana gravitated towards performing arts ever since elementary school.

“My sister was really heavily into volleyball,” she said. “My dad played volleyball, so we didn’t really have an artistic side. My grandma used to sing a lot though,” Chetana said. “So me doing performing arts is not something that’s common in my family. But, it was pretty much out of the blue.”

While her sister performed Indian dance, Chetana’s performing arts passion stemmed from singing. It wasn’t until middle school that she discovered her passion for acting.

“For me, acting is just something that I love to do, and the feeling when you’re on stage and you’re performing is really unparalleled,” she said. “I think it’s the entire process that makes me come back for more. You know, the rehearsal process, character development, all of these things that kind of come together to form the final product that the audience doesn’t really see but the actors spend so long making into their actual character.”

As an actor, Chetana feels pressure from the inherent risks of performing live.

“The main challenges that I faced as an actor was being uncertain about things, whether that’s about something like how the audience will react, and what if my scene partner forgets a line?” Chetana said. “I think there is a sense of uncertainty that’s probably the scariest thing for me.”

At a school that emphasises academic prowess, Chetana uses theater as an outlet to express her emotions.

“I really think theater is kind of an outlet, and it’s a way to express yourself,” she said. “I guess it’s way to express yourself however you want to. You can be different characters, [and] you can do all these different things.”

For the annual Senior Directed Showcase, Chetana directed her first play, a comedy called “Grover,” about a woman who marries too young and signs a contract to obtain a fake dog in order to scare her husband away.

“I [was] so excited to watch my cast members go through that experience and go through the same things that I went through,” she said. “I [was] really excited to help them through that journey.”

While Chetana is unsure of how her future looks, she plans to continue pursuing performing arts and using the skills she has learned through acting.

“I definitely plan on doing plays for fun in college,” she said. “I feel like even if I’m not going to go into it professionally, it definitely taught me so much that I can take into academic stuff, and other stuff. I also want to do business or sales. One of the main things about sales is you have to be poised, you have to be confident, and those qualities, I’ve definitely learned through acting and theater, like projecting, and standing up straight and being confident in yourself. So I definitely think that theater, even if I don’t do it as a professional, it has definitely helped me develop certain skills I will use in my academic pursuits also.”