Meghan Murray: On bringing Broadway Home

Raised on vinyl records, Broadway soundtracks and parish-stage competitions in Bandra, Megan Murray didn’t just discover musical theatre, but grew up inside it. Her father, a devoted music collector, filled their home with the warm crackle of vinyl spinning everything from timeless classics to contemporary greats, giving her an early and eclectic musical education. Alongside that came hours spent watching Broadway productions, absorbing their scale, spectacle and emotional depth. Back home, the stage may have been smaller, but it was no less significant. Inter-school and inter-parish competitions became her training ground and her first real taste of live performance. Murray’s connection to the performing arts runs deeper than childhood exposure. Her parents met while performing in a musical, making theatre part of her story long before she stepped onto a stage herself.Also read – Pia Sutaria: From the West End to Centre Stage in BombayToday, she is an established singer-songwriter who performs in venues from Los Angeles to Bombay. She studied Voice and Independent Artist Development at The Musicians Institute, sharpening her craft while navigating the realities of building a career in music. Over the years, she has worked and performed with several respected local and international musicians. Most recently, she lent her vocal talents to reigning blues queen Shemekia Copeland’s 2023 Grammy-nominated album Done Come Too Far, reflecting both her range and repute within the industry.Also read: Interstellar, Einstein and the strange elasticity of timeEven as her music career gathered momentum, theatre remained close to her heart. Singing may have been her first love, but musical theatre has always been a parallel dream. As a child, she imagined a future in the performing arts, though growing up in India at a time when structured platforms and specialised training were limited meant she had to be pragmatic. Music felt like a more viable path, even as she continued performing whenever she could. She also believes the time for theatre in India has never been more promising. For years, Broadway-style productions were appreciated by a niche audience, with veterans staging musicals on a smaller scale and quietly laying the groundwork. Now, with venues capable of supporting large-scale productions and audiences increasingly open to global experiences, she sees a cultural shift underway. The Indian palate, she says, is expanding — in food, music, travel and in live arts. That openness is creating space for ambitious, immersive storytelling to thrive on Indian soil.Looking ahead, Murray’s ambitions are both fluid and firmly rooted. She says she will go wherever music and live theatre take her, but the dream, undeniably, is Broadway. Whether that moment unfolds in New York, on London’s West End, or on an Indian stage that reimagines the genre for homegrown audiences, her goal is simple: to remain a live performer at the highest level. India already has Bollywood, she points out, and she believes the country could soon have its own version of Broadway. She moves closer to this goal with her lead role in Tesseract (13th to 22nd March at The Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, NCPA). Not just towards a personal milestone, but towards a larger moment where India doesn’t simply host global theatre, but begins to define and create it on its own terms.“Tesseract: The Geometry of Truth” is produced by The Times of India, with concept and visualisation by Meera Jain.Experience “Tesseract: The Geometry of Truth”, running from 16 to 22 March 2026 at NCPA Mumbai. Book here