The Anti "Yogi"

As a white woman with a MoreYoga membership and a penchant for activewear, I felt both excited and nervous sitting down for The Anti-Yogi. With the subtitle “Liberation! Not Lululemon!” glowing above a stage decorated with Hindu gods, I immediately understood that I was part of the problem.

Written and performed by Mayuri Bhandari, this ambitious one-woman show tackles cultural appropriation, capitalism and identity with warmth, chaos and a lot of humour. Bhandari opens the show explaining to her dad she is about to attend a yoga class, clearly run by a white woman who is enthusiastically butchering Sanskrit pose names and throwing in wellness buzzwords like “manifest” and “matcha.”

On stage with Mayuri Bhandari is Neel Agrawal, composer and live percussionist, who not only underscores the storytelling with music but also occasionally offers a perfectly timed nod of agreement to her arguments, subtly becoming part of the commentary himself.

White people, Bhandari explains, are “cute”, either adorably clueless or unknowingly participating in colonisation, and as a white audience member, you spend much of the evening laughing at yourself while also absorbing some uncomfortable truths. But Bhandari is just as willing to make herself the punchline. At one point, she breaks into Doja Cat’s “Paint the Town Red,” dances inappropriately, then immediately apologises to the shrine of gods watching over her from stage left.

The play’s emotional core is Bhandari’s memory and love of yoga from childhood and the pain of having it appropriated and sold back to her in her home city of Los Angeles. She moves effortlessly between storytelling, dance and character work, keeping the show exciting and unpredictable throughout.

One of the funniest elements is the way she brings the gods on the shrine to life. Krishna, Buddha and Shiva all become comic characters through exaggerated movements and accents (white people: do not try this at home). These performances make the play feel far bigger than a one woman show, filling the stage with different perspectives and personalities that both entertain and educate the audience.

A moving conversation with her mother, who is perfectly brought to life through mannerisms and vocal shifts, reveals the racist violence she experienced after moving to America simply for wearing a Bindi, a sacred symbol of self-love in Indian culture. In the so-called ‘land of the free’, she felt the opposite.

What makes The Anti-Yogi so affecting is Bhandari’s connection with the audience. She looks people directly in the eye, but in a way that feels safe rather than uncomfortable.

By the end, I wanted to cry, scream and hug everyone. Instead, I texted all my friends encouraging them to go and see this brilliant play. Hopefully that makes up for wearing Lululemon to yoga classes.