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Sharmila B Livingston

Living the Musical

Sharmila Banerjee Livingston is a soloist and musician in Delhi who has specialized in contemporary and classical sacred music. She studied music at Wheaton College, Illinois, with a major in Vocal Performance, and has directed and composed original musicals for several Delhi schools. After growing up in Delhi and watching schools present either “Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat”, or “Jesus Christ Superstar”, Sharmila had the urge to experiment with something new. The Andrew Lloyd Weber shows had fabulous, memorable music, but she felt there was need for fresh inspiration.

Sharmila’s first two productions had only sections of completely original music, but by her third production, “For Such a Time as This”, the entire script, melodies, and lyrics for the shows were completely original.

1. “Joy to the World”, with a cast of 1000 children from St. Thomas School on the occasion of Millenium celebrations in the city.” Joy to the world” was created specially for St. Thomas school as a musical version of the entire Biblical narrative from Genesis and creation to the Resurrection of Christ, using dance, drama, and music. The inspiration for this musical came from “The Millenium prayer” sung by Cliff Richards which was released that year.

2. “Walk to Freedom”, with a cast of 1000 children from St. Thomas School on the occasion of their Platinum Jubilee (November 2005). After the success of the first musical, the Principal of St. Thomas School asked her to create another event, and this time inspiration came from the Disney version of the Prince of Egypt.

3. “For Such a Time as This”, with a cast of 350 children from Mater Dei School on the occasion of their Golden Jubilee (April 2006). The school had wanted a musical on the Bibical character of Ruth. Sharmila, however, preferred the story of Queen Esther, which she felt was full of drama, colour, characters and inspiration.

4. “Showtime”, with Fr. Agnel School celebrating the inauguration of their new auditorium with a cast of 350 children (March 2007). Fr. Agnel had originally wanted to stage the Disney “High School Musical”, but after a long delay in obtaining licenses and permissions from Disney to do the show, Sharmila went ahead with her own original musical on the making of a show.

5. “WAiT- It’s a Musical”, with St. Thomas School performing the Asian Debut of this ‘Grammy in the Streets’ winning American musical by Chris Anderson, with a cast of 400 children. (November 2007). After the school asked Sharmila to present a Nativity play, she contacted Chris Anderson after hearing her splendid music in “Wait – It’s a Musical” online. Chris Anderson was both delighted and intrigued that her musical with a handful of cast members would be translated into a cast of 400.

6. “Imagine”, with over 500 boys from Mount St. Mary’s celebrating the global Bi-Centennial of the Patrician Brotherhood. (October 2008). “Imagine” was an exercise of drawing nectar from a rock, as Sharmila pored over hundreds of black and white pages of reports, agendas, minutes, articles from the school library,  to look for characters, anecdotes, and inspiration for the historical, global story of the Patricians.

Her latest attempt, Fast Forward, is a monolithic tribute to musicals in India. Our world is again on the brink of significant changes. Global networks, new environmental patterns, and exponential advances in technology are responsible. Every aspect of life has been affected. In such a scenario, it hardly seems appropriate to only look back into history, and this is what she has based the musical on. With collaborations with famous artists and a concept of Samosa rap, the premier was a great success and promises to truly catapult her into the international musicals scene. She feels that students need opportunities to use and develop their talents in music, dance, acting, speaking. Musicals and theatre teach them confidence, making priorities in life to excel in their talents, responsibility on and off stage, respect for others’ talent, time-management to study, rehearse, prepare for a show, and even aiming for excellence, and dealing with failure.

Overall, these are valuable extra-curricular experiences and Sharmila wanted to give school kids an chance to explore and exploit these opportunities.

Other Pursuits

She enjoys creativity in several mediums. Taking a break from composing and directing for a few years, she pursued other creative projects including a new fabric design concept with Dabu resist prints on denim, which was taken on as a commercial project with Fabindia. She has also been an entrepreneur with business experiences in Catering, Hospitality, Entertainment, event management and the Travel industry. She also enjoys working with youth, and is a marriage/parenting/spiritual-growth counsellor in her free time.

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