It is hard to imagine a face more earnest than Mehak Mirza Prabhu’s. The Mumbai-based storyteller is bright-eyed, willing, and courageous – you have to be to star in an interactive one-woman show.
JULIE: Her Life in Your Hands premiered at the Adelaide Fringe on Tuesday, March 18th. The show innovatively slots into a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ format. Audience members are handed laser pointers which help them decide Julie’s – played by Prabhu – fate. Throughout the show, audience members will also interact with Julie: ask her questions, act as a dialogue partner in various scenes, become characters in her story.
Prabhu did not always want to be a storyteller. “So the first time I actually stepped on stage in my entire life was when I was thirty-five,” she says. “Before that, I had stage fright.” She grew up meek, shy. The thought of an audience made her freeze.
But everything changed after a mental health crisis. In her early thirties, she was running her own business, and raising a child as a single mother – until she couldn’t run the business any further. “It’s like it was all written for me to start this journey as an artist.” Things fell into place “one after another. People started recognising me, liking my work, and very soon I could become a professional story-teller.”
The show came about after discussions between her and the director Suhani Shah. The two of them couldn’t stop thinking about how, “in our lives, we don’t even realise how much people influence us. So we wanted to bring that alive, that entire concept alive.”
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When it comes to JULIE, “The audience is never just an audience. The audience is part of a life. They are the people who are around her. And then can influence her,” Prabhu says. “Depending on where the audience is taking my life, I have to tap into different aspects of my personal life.”
So far, the process has been incredibly rewarding. She is so grateful for the way that the audiences she has performed to have gotten fully involved. “The audience is making it their own. They’re not just sitting there. I feel extreme love, and that makes a lot of difference to me.”
It is her first time in Adelaide – and she is having a blast. “The Australian audience has spoiled me,” she says. “I am loving it. The people – they have a heart of gold. Such warmth. Such love. I’ll never forget it.”
And she is keen for the remaining run of shows. The final performance will be held on Sunday, March 23rd.
“Come and become a part of Julie’s story,” she says. “That’s all I want: for people to experience it.”
Tickets for JULIE: Her Life in Your Hands can be purchased online here.
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its
arts funding and advisory body
