Today evening, as many as 183 artistes will present Meera – The Musical with 300 volunteers of the Art of Living Foundation. They will touch upon various aspects of the life of Meera Bai. The 90-minute musical, interspersed with English dialogues, will have an original soundtrack in Hindi. It includes 10 lesser-known compositions of Meera Bai along with songs composed by musicians and singers like KS Chitraji, Bhanumathi Narasimhan, B Prasanna, Gautam Dabir, Sachin Limaye and others from the Art of Living. Classical dances – Bharatanatyam, Kathak and Odissi and traditional folk dances of Rajasthan – Ghoomar and Gair will be included in the musical with contemporary lyrical yoga.
The musical’s director is Bengaluru-based Srividya Varchaswi, the woman behind mega productions, Cosmic Rhythm and International Yoga Day performance at Lincoln Centre, New York. For Varchaswi, Meera Bai has always been a complete woman. “She embodied everything a woman stands for – the courage, the conviction, the kind of transformation she brought about wherever she went. This is the power we have as women.”
Varchaswi further points that Meera is as relevant today as when she was alive. “We can easily bring about a transformation in people who come in contact with us. We all have that extra power to bring about a sea change in humanity just through love.”
Varchaswi reveals she did thorough research on Meera Bai’s life. “We got a lot of information from the books written by noted historians DK Hari and Hema Hari. To authenticate Meera’s bhajans, we got in touch with the locals of Mewar [where she was born] and Chittaur [where she lived after her marriage to Bhoj Raj].
Proceeds from the production will go towards the education of over 70,000 students from over 700 free schools run by the AOL Foundation in tribal and rural areas across India. In fact, students of three Delhi-based AOL schools – Indirapuram, (Ghaziabad), Sector 9 (Noida) and the afternoon school in the premises of SSRVM school in Sector 48 Noida – will perform in the musical.