Mayuri Bhandari is an award-winning Indian American actor, dancer, figure skating champion and yoga professor based in Los Angeles. She has appeared in Indian television shows such as Dare 2 Dance and Just Dance (Star Plus), and has screen credits including The Lincoln Lawyer (Netflix), Hacks (HBO) and Ms. Marvel (Disney).
Her debut theatre production, The Anti “Yogi”, premiered at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2024, where it won the Dance & Physical Theatre award, before going on to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025, where she received an Asian Arts Award for Outstanding Solo Performer (Female).
The show now returns to the UK, running at Soho Theatre from 6-16 May. Asian Voice spoke to Mayuri about the inspiration behind the production, her journey across dance, screen and theatre, and what audiences can expect from the show’s return.
1) The Anti “Yogi” blends humour with critique. What was the turning point that made you want to create this show?
The turning point came from the irony of feeling like a minority within a practice rooted in one’s own cultural background. Since 2014, navigating Western wellness spaces highlighted how an ancestral tradition was being repackaged and sold back as fitness and performative spirituality, often serving ego rather than self-inquiry. This led to a desire to decolonise the practice and challenge defensiveness around entitlement and the lack of South Asian voices. It was felt that discussion alone was not enough, and audiences needed to “feel the weight of this silencing” and understand what yoga and “union” truly represent. During the 2023 Actors’ Strike, this evolved into a “critical intervention.” The Anti “Yogi”: Liberation, Not Lululemon! focuses on reclaiming narrative and advocating for social justice.
2) You describe the show as something to be “felt, not just understood”, what emotions do you hope audiences leave with?
I want the audience to feel they’ve experienced a full, multi-course meal of emotions. Drawing from the Natyashastra and its concept of Rasas, I aim to evoke a range of “flavours”, from laughter and introspection to discomfort and “righteous rage.” While the work is entertaining, it is also meant to surprise and challenge audiences, leaving them with a “cup of courage” and a sense of “hope in action.” Ultimately, I hope they leave with open hearts, reflecting on empathy, liberation, and their own role in responding to injustice, whether through healing, awareness, or action.
3) What drew you to embody Kali in this story, and what does she represent today?
Simply put, Mother Kali is a powerful disruptor in the yogic tradition, one who dismantles ego and eradicates ignorance at its root. I was drawn to her because she defies the sanitised idea of what a “goddess” should be, embodying something raw, fierce, and unapologetic. She represents Mother Nature and the idea of “righteous rage” in the context of decolonisation today, a force that challenges cultural and systemic imbalance. Her “not knowing” symbolises the everyday person who seeks to do good but may not fully grasp wider systemic realities. In this way, she reflects justice rooted in awareness and collective action, reclaiming the “sacred” from the “sanitised” while questioning the structures behind modern wellness culture.
4) What does bringing the show to London, with its large South Asian diaspora, mean to you personally and artistically?
Personally, bringing this show to London feels both surreal and necessary. With such a vibrant South Asian diaspora, it’s an honour to share this story where our community is so deeply rooted. Performing in the land of our colonisers, built on the riches of ancestral countries, carries a strong irony, but it also feels essential to reclaim narrative here.
Premiering at Soho Theatre is a major artistic milestone, and the work aims to resonate with the British Asian experience and wider communities of colour who have faced cultural erasure. It is not just a performance, but a dialogue on reclaiming ancestral practices once suppressed, and exploring liberation and “union” as universal ideas that cross borders.
