Suffolk junior Jake Athyal is making his professional stage debut this summer in Company One’s production of The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity. Don Aucoin of the Boston Globe called the production “exhilaratingly sharp” and highlighted Athyal’s performance as being “first rate.”

Born and raised in India until he moved to Massachusetts as a teenager, Athyal plays an Indian-American wrestler from Brooklyn. The theatre minor first learned of the opportunity to audition through Suffolk alum Nael Nacer ’07, who regularly performs for Company One and other Boston theatre companies. (Nacer was profiled by the Boston Globe last fall as one of Boston’s leading young actors.)

The award-winning Company One, in residence at the Boston Center for the Arts, presents plays that foster positive social change. Chad Deity tackles racism, globalization, and the American Dream through the satiric lens of professional wrestling. The show runs from July 28 to August 25.

As if playing a wrestler five nights a week isn’t enough, Athyal spends his summer days portraying a colonist aboard the newly reopened Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, along with two other Suffolk students, theatre majors Conor Walsh and Jillian C