TRITIA DEVISHA

“Sexy vampire co-host? – I was made for that job!”

My name is Tritia DeViSha. Most people know me as Trish, because 99% of people I meet never know how to pronounce my first name when they see it written, so I just try to make it simple.

I am passionate about everything I do and have in my life, and I let my passions drive me.  I believe that life needs to be lived with passion, as it is said in the three points of Lord Shiva’s trident (or Trishul), follow your passion. When you are working with Passion you find Purpose, and with Purpose you achieve Power, the Power of the Universe working behind you to achieve your goals & dreams.

In my life ever since I was a kid, there were three things I wanted to achieve with my life:

1. To be on national television
2. To be a famous actress
3. To learn and master the secrets of the universe

I was interested in Arts, Performance, Spirituality & Esoteric sciences from a young age. As a kid I read everything I could find in the library about those topics (before the days of the internet).

My parents, coming from a conservative Asian background, were quite opposed to my creative passions back then, warning me that I’d end up a “starving artist in the gutter”.

I hated the whole structure of school, though I did well at school and found it easy, I disliked it immensely because I don’t like sitting still for long periods of time and being forced to listen to things I didn’t have much interest in.

After I finished high school, I couldn’t endure the thought of another 4 years of monotonously structured studies at Uni.

Instead, I completed a FengShui Practitioner Certificate out of personal interest, then decided I loved what I learnt, but wasn’t really interested in fengshuiing other people’s houses… I then started a beauty therapy cosmetology course (also out of personal interest), which I nearly completed until I had to do work experience, then I also realised that I loved makeup and learning the techniques, but didn’t really enjoy doing makeup on other people and would prefer people doing makeup on me!

It’s like that for a lot of things in my life; I have a lot of hobbies & things I love to do for myself as a hobby or to create as gifts for close friends & family, but would not enjoy it as a career… Painting is another one of those things, I love to paint but can’t bear to part with my work, and only paint when I’m inspired, so could never paint on commission or deadline.

So, pressured by my parents, and by society as a whole, searching for what I was meant to do with my life, I then tried to go down a conventional career route & completed a certificate in business administration, and got a job in marketing administration.

I did that for 2 years and hated it immensely. Each week was a downward spiral from Monday, until the Friday high, and then weekends spent in a frenzy of meaningless consumption, trying to compensate for the misery of the week.

It made me hate my life.

I was doing everything society expected of me, working, getting better jobs and earning more money, but I wasn’t happy. Another expectation I adopted in my youth was that by 30, I’d be married with two kids. I was living with a great partner at the time, and he was keen to head down that path with me.

Luckily for me, my then-partner could see that I was unhappy in my work, and offered to support me while I figured out what I wanted to do. I took the opportunity, and asked myself: ‘What am I really passionate about? What makes me happy?’ – and realized the answer lay back in my childhood passions: acting, being in front of a camera.

I quit my corporate job and got part-time reception work, which allowed me flexibility to come and go as I needed. The other bonus of the reception job was that I had a much lighter workload than I did when working in marketing/admin, so in all the free time I had when there was no one in the lobby was that I could surf the Internet and do lots of research and study into esoteric topics.

I enrolled & studied in various acting courses and training, and at the same time I approached RMITV’s Channel 31, which was a community network channel, to do some volunteer presenting work.

I did a few segments for different local shows, and then got a more regular volunteer presenting gig on RMITV.

I did that for a while, and then in 2005 I came across an online posting about a new SBS music show that was looking for content. I thought, “If it’s a new show needing content, maybe they also need presenters?” I called the number and got in touch with a producer, and arranged an audition.

The following week I was presenting on Noise TV on SBS, and achieving my first childhood lifelong goal of being on national TV.

They weren’t advertising for presenters because they already had some, but because I was proactive and approached them with the right pitch, I was able to get onboard. My advice is to be pro-active, but not to be in people’s faces. You never know if you don’t ask. But if you ask, and get a no – don’t harass people. Just make sure you’re known, and then back off, otherwise you’ll get blocked!

Noise TV was an intensive training ground for me.

Initially, I started off as a segment presenter, turning up once a week and following the script. As time progressed and I learnt the industry, I started getting more pro-active, writing my own scripts and taking on more of a producer role to take advantage of the access we had to interesting events that happened at the time.

For example, there’d be a festival, or a concert on that I thought would make a good segment. The producers would say, ‘Well, we haven’t organized to attend, but if you want to go, organize it yourself’. So I would.

My job morphed into this dual producer/presenter role, then I got involved with directing my camera crew, which then led to editing.

I learnt a little bit of everything in order to get the job done.

Being in front of the camera remained my main passion, but I loved having input and control of the story, of having a vision and working all these roles to bring it to life, my way. I learnt the other aspects of film-making because I believe the more you learn about your industry, the better you will be in your role overall.

I started working more and more, quitting my reception job and eventually going full time at NoiseTV. I started discovering myself, following my passions, and felt that the life I was supposed to live was finally beginning!!

Unfortunately, my working schedule changed to a point where it was almost the exact opposite of my ex-partner’s.

We became like ships in the night, our interests diverged completely and we started growing apart & eventually decided to end our relationship.

These days I’m lucky to have a very wonderfully loving & supportive partner, who happens to work in the same industry/and has worked in the same industries as me. He’s an ex personal trainer who went back to school to become a cameraman. We met on a film set, and share the same passions for fitness & film.

He sometimes helps and collaborates with me on some of my projects, and because of the nature of his work we have similar time/work schedules, which is fantastic and allows us to spend a lot of quality time together.

He is such a rock for me and I feel very blessed to have him in my life.

So while working at NoiseTV, I started attending a lot of outdoor festivals & got deep into various new age movements and conspiracy theories, commencing upon a ‘soul seeking’ journey.

I left my dream job at NoiseTV in 2009 to become a hippy and travel around Australia as a gypsy in my wagon. I travelled up and down the east coast, going to festivals and spiritual meetings, living in hippy communes and sustainable communities, trying to figure out spiritual answers to life, as well as ways to “escape the Matrix”, until finally moving to Byron Bay.

Outside of that though, I didn’t really know who I was.

I was seeking something, without being exactly sure what. I was seeking guidance, a higher purpose, however was looking in the wrong places (externally), and now that I found it, looking back I realize that it was within myself all along, supressed under the whole heap of New Age & ‘Ascension’ propaganda that I had swallowed.

One day while I was living in Byron I met a man at a gig who then cast me in the lead role of his action feature film he was making, Black Betty.  That film is yet to be completed & released, but it struck me that here I was, trying to push the world away, yet it kept coming after me, as if it was destined to be.

After six months of shooting and completing Black Betty in Byron, I decided to return to Melbourne in 2012 and focus on film & acting.

I was cast as the mob boss villain in Nathan Hill’s  feature Revenge of the Gweilo, for which I won a ‘Best Supporting Actress‘ award. I also started doing a lot of film work, while teaching yoga part-time.

Still, there was something deep inside me that was still searching.

So I made a pilgrimage to India, to renounce the world, study more yoga & possibly never come back – should I find what I was seeking deep in the mountains.

I went from Delhi, to Kashmir & Rishikesh in the Himalayas, across to the holy city of Varanasi, all with no shoes on, like a travelling mystic.

Yet on my travels, I was disillusioned by what I saw.

I met some babas, people who had renounced the world, like I thought I wanted to. Most were beggars and could not feed or clothe themselves. I met a man with an injured arm, who told me he used to be a jewellery dealer, before he renounced the world. Now he had no money to have an operation on his arm. As I gave him some money, I realized that these people couldn’t do anything: they had no money and no means to survive, yet alone to help others.

They were suffering. They were subject to other people’s mercies.

If other people weren’t kind, they were stuck. I realized that I didn’t want to be subject to other people. I didn’t want to be subject to anything external to me.

Then I met an American Saddhu, who had been studying and living in India for decades. He ran an Ashram that helped people – feeding orphans, housing widows, providing kids’ education and helping the sick and the poor. I thought, ‘This is what I want to create’.

This man hadn’t renounced himself from the world, he was in the world.

You have to be in the world to affect any change in it. That’s when I realized I needed to remain in the world, even if I was not of it.

I returned to Melbourne more grounded & focused on the direction in which I wanted to go.

I directed my first film “Lilith”, in 2015, based upon the first wife of Adam before Eve in the garden of Eden. That has been screened at various short film nights around Melbourne & was part of the Official selection of the Rouge Program in the Setting Sun festival a couple of years ago.

After that I did a very short film about Kali, the Hindu goddess of yoga and destruction.

Her energy is very prominent in my life; having to destroy to create, she who brings the Darkness to Light.

Kali is one of my Patron Goddesses along with Lilith and Inanna. I tend to be interested in making fantasy films based upon mythological themes of “Dark” Goddesses, because the term ‘dark’ is so poorly understood in our whitewashed society. 

Following on from that, I made my experimental short The Kali Geisha Erotica Grotesque”, which won a best short film award and was also screened in India as part of the Official Selection for a Horror Film Festival in Mumbai.

Kali Geisha led to my involvement with the Horror House project. David Black, the creator of Horror House, got in touch with me, initially to ask if he could use the film to screen on his new show, which was a platform for short horror movies. I agreed.  

Then, a few months later, I saw that he was also looking for a co-host.

Sexy vampire co-host? – I was made for that job! I got in touch with him, and got on board his project. It’s been a fun ride, we have an absolute blast on the shoots, the whole team is fantastic.

From there, I continued to collaborate with David. Right now, we’re working on a project called Tales that Broke my Brain, a series of short films. It’s all about being creative and pushing boundaries, not only in terms or creativity, but in the art of film-making: cutting through the bullshit and telling stories on minimum time and budget. Just getting stuff out there.  

Most of the scripts of the series are slightly off-centre comedies written by David and we are starting to amass a large team of collaborators. Our first short of the series Cannibal BBQ is up and we have shot our second, and are in pre-production for the next few.

With Cannibal BBQ – we shot in the morning from 7-12 pm, and then I went home and edited it that afternoon; it was completed in less than twenty four hours.

Fun, crazy, guerrilla film-making; I love it.

I am also finishing up post-production on my film Inanna, which has been a rather lengthy process that hopefully will be completed by the end of this year or early next year. 

As an actor, I love to play big, outrageous and somewhat villanous characters.

It’s just who I am; I’ve always found the mundane boring. Acting allows me to fully embody and express somewhat extreme aspects of the human psyche and archetypes found in my more interesting characters and storylines, while in the safe space of the film, and then to return to reality of myself as Trish.

Of course I still play ‘normal’ characters for more commercial or corporate gigs, but it’s much more enjoyable for me to play a psychotic mob boss (ROTG) or slightly crazed supernatural karaoke club owner (Mui Karaoke), as opposed to a bank manager.

However, everything has it’s place, all work is good and I love the diversity of it all. All of it helps me work towards my 2nd life goal.

I also love teaching yoga, as I feel it’s a way I can give back to the world and community.

Yoga has had a profound impact upon my own life and I love that I can share the benefits with others. It’s very rewarding to have a job that at the end of every session you get to see a roomful of relaxed, smiling faces telling you how good they feel from your class, and seeing students/clients/members progress over the years.

Perhaps the only challenge with teaching yoga is that it’s hard to get back-to-back classes. That means that sometimes I’m doing a lot of commuting or ‘split shift’ days, where I’m teaching one class in the mornings, one in the afternoon & one in the evening and having a lot of time in between.

It’s a different schedule every day, so it can be a little disjointed, but on the bright side,  I have all this free time between classes, and I get to have a siesta in the middle of the day if I want, and my times really suit me with my creative endeavours.

And I prefer it 100% over a 9-5 anyday.

So in the end in life it’s how you perceive things: you can complain about the challenges, or you can embrace it, and your outlook & mindset pretty much bleeds throughout all areas of your life.

Just like spending ten hours on a film set. You can complain about the long hours, or be grateful you’re doing what you love.

And if you’re doing what you love, then it isn’t really work!!

So those are my life goals. I’ve achieved the first one, and am working towards my 2nd & 3rd. I would consider going back to act or present on television, but producing TV is a very tiring job, something I probably would not want to do full time again regardless of money because I love the quality of life I currently have and I’m not really that passionate about producing.

In the short term, I’m focused on completing the film projects that I’m working on. In the current to long term, my goal is to get more good roles in high quality productions to build up my profile.

One of my dreams is to work with actors like Jackie Chan, Jet Li & Donnie Yen, and/or star in some Marvel movies as some sort of superhero. I will probably create another action reel again soon. 

Regarding my Yoga, I am looking into possibly starting to run yoga retreats,  sometime in the next five years.

It’s not a pressing dream or priority, just something my students have asked for – so if there is enough demand and I have the free time I will do it.

In the long term, on a personal level, I would love to own my own self sustainable property with my partner. Somewhere up in the mountains of the Dandenong Ranges in Melbourne (maybe if we’re rich, then a few more in the Himalayan mountains of India, and in mountains in China).

I dream of creating off grid retreats, run by solar or hydro power with Tesla batteries, food gardens and water tanks, lots of outdoor hot tubs and a giant pyramid yoga studio/temple.

Of having the resources to help others on a grand scale, eventually expanding my retreats into Ashrams that help & give back to the community.

I would base it on the model of some of the Indian ashrams I’ve visited, and create a trust fund where all the interest from the fund is put into different projects, like education for underprivileged kids, feeding the homeless and so on, and keeping the funding for these projects going & expanding them on an ongoing basis as the trust fund & interest grows.

So in the end, like I said at the beginning, I let my passions drive me.

And following that has led to a lot of happiness & personal satisfaction & reward for me on many levels.

We might be able to achieve all our dreams & change the world in this lifetime.. or we might get hit by a car and die tomorrow.

I’ve said that for as long as I can remember… then my best friend of 17 years was killed in a motor accident at the end of last year. That made it all the more real for me. God only knows how long we have.

Therefore I plan for forever and I live in the moment, because it’s about being Present & enjoying the Present in the here and now, and enjoying every step of the journey. And I am enjoying it immensely