The critically acclaimed Brisbane actor, singer and composer/lyricist has forged her way quickly into the ultra competitive world of musical theatre, not only as a performer, but also as a writer, winning awards for two musicals of her own creation now in development.

She stars as Catherine Parr in Six the Musical, a show close to her heart with the Brisbane season starting on December 30 at QPAC’s Playhouse encapsulating her last performances with the touring production.

“I think the word that for me rings true is electricity – you leave feeling electric,” Makan said of Six the Musical’s appeal.

“Imagine the hottest pop band in the entire world and it just happens to be the six wives of Henry VII. And we give you a 75 minute long show where we talk about the archetypes that we’ve been painted as all these 500 years. We kind of break that down in our own way.

“We begin the show introducing ourselves and we say, OK, we’re going to run a competition of which one of us had the worst time with Henry. And then my character gets to do something really cool and it flips the show on its head. I won’t say too much, you’ve got to come and see the show, but it’s a very, very, very cool piece of theatre.”

Such is the popularity of the show that the Broadway album of the soundtrack was nominated for a Grammy Award, and songs from the show have been streamed more than 23 million times worldwide, making it one of the most succcessful recordings in musical theatre history.

Makan is constantly amazed by the dedication of fans of Six the Musical – with many fans in the audience emulating their favourite character on stage by meticulously copying their complex costumes to the most intricate detail.

“Sometimes you will look into the audience and go, that’s my costume – how are they wearing my costume? The detail to perfection is incredible,” she said.

“The costumes in themselves are a part of what makes this show a cult following. They are so iconic in the colours and the styles.”

It is hard to believe how close Makan came to not envisioning herself in an onstage role at all, despite her obvious talent.

“As a kid, I was a soccer player and a musician. So growing up my dream was to play soccer for Australia and then also be in the pit of the orchestra for musicals,” she said.

“I was always obsessed with musicals but never performed in them.
And then at Somerville House, that was when I started to get into performing and fell in love with it. I was really lucky. Somerville had an amazing music department and the teachers that I had, I’m still friends with to this day.

“I remember when I auditioned for Six, I didn’t realise what I had been missing in that it was the first time I was ever seen as a woman in an audition room as a full three dimensional woman. Not someone trying to fill an archetype, not trying to be a race that I’m not, because there aren’t many musicals that are written for Indian women.

“And I think the very real impact that Six has had on the industry, you’re seeing these new shows, you’re seeing so many new Australian musicals that are written by local talent, with local people that look like who we look like when we walk around. Not this weird thing that I was always fed as a child.”

She’s relieved to finally now see real progress in the performing arts in its representation of diversity on stage.

“We’ve always known that we’ve been here, people of colour and minority voices,” she said. “We’ve always been here and we’ve always been extremely talented and we’ve always been extremely capable. I think now the rest of the industry are going, oh, oh, you’re right.

“I definitely feel that the industry is changing and I am so so proud and excited to be a part of that and to engage with it as we move forward.

“There were a lot and are a lot of conversations when it comes to casting in Australia. And I think sometimes they’re not led by the right people.

“So I wrote a song called I Need You to See Me. It featured 101 BIPOC, culturally and Linguistically Diverse Artists, aged 18 to 25. We did this song and it blew up.

“And I’m so proud of the splash that it made because so many of those kids who were all young people who were in that video and in that original song are now just working professionally from job to job to job. And I feel very, very proud of the very real impact that the song has made on each of them.”

And by fulfilling her potential on stage as a touring musical performer, Makan has found that has fed into her creativity in writing new theatrical works.

“I’ve been a composer, lyricist my whole life. It’s something that I love sharing with Catherine Parr who we’re playing in Six because we’re both writers,” she said.

“Whenever I would see people of colour, particularly on Australian stages, we were always reduced down to these very racist stereotypes.

“So I started writing a show about what it means to be Australian from the voices of the margins. And that is basically what our show is. It’s an exploration of who we can be.

“This particular show, the Lucky Country, I’ve been myself working on for about five years…and it’s just been announced to premiere at Hayes Theatre in May next year.”

As well as this production Vidya also recently won a NSW Musical Theatre Fellowship in association with Hayes Theatre, which has commissioned her to develop this work titled “Light” with her collaborator Tasnim Hussein.

“Our pitch was, we just wanted to write a show about what it is for South Asian Australians living in the suburbs. In some ways, an unremarkable story but remarkable in its truthfulness,” she said.

“We’ve got our Act one written and we’re working on that draft and hopefully we’ll see a premiere of that in the years to come.”