With a performing company of over 40 people, actress Shilpa Shetty is launching her new musical 'Miss Bollywood' on 3rd November 2007 in Manchester and tours until the finale on 12th December 2007 at the Royal Albert Hall, London. As London prepares to host the 2012 Olympics, the city’s Mayor announces that run-down areas in the East will undergo renovation and renewal. All good and well unless you happen to be Maya, a dancer and choreographer, recently arrived from India, who has invested her life savings setting up a Dance Academy in a building that is about to be demolished.

Now Maya must aim for the dizzy heights of stardom to get herself and her friends out of a fix. She lands an audition for Nick, a powerful promoter of live entertainment and replaces Sophiya, Nick’s old flame and female lead. Maya’s arrival infuses the performing company with new inspiration and gusto and causes the romantic Jay, the leading male dancer, to go weak at the knees.

When Nick invites Maya to join him at the Mayor’s party, she accepts, hoping to make an appeal on behalf of her community for compensation and more time to move to other premises. As far as Nick is concerned, Maya is the missing ingredient he needs to clinch the deal for the Mayor’s concert and someone he is determined to get close to. The party rocks, drinks flow and Nick gets fresh with his new muse, earning himself one tight slap for his troubles.

The Mayor witnesses this then begins to read a letter from Maya that makes him see red. Has Maya blown her chances? Or is it possible for a principled girl to take up Nick’s challenge and put together a bid of her own?

Miss Bollywood is a tongue-in-cheek look at innocence abroad and how it can survive in spite of itself and the ‘culturally diverse’ obstacle course that it encounters along the way. Only this time, it is the differences between European ‘Desis’ like Nick and newly arrived economic migrants like Maya, her two wacky neighbours Hasmukhlal and Mansukhlal and the level-headed eight year old Shruti that provide the conflict and the fun.

ABOUT THE CAST

Shilpa Shetty makes her theatrical debut as Maya, the Bollywood heroine abroad, who fends off impresario Nick (Nicholas Brown) stands up to leading lady Sophiya (Anousha Dandekar) romances choreographer Jay (Wayne Perrey) and appeals to the fair mind of London’s next Mayor (Peter Rylands). She does this with the help of Shruti (Swini Khara), Shurti’s father, Mansukhlal (Amit Sial) and his ‘entrepreneurial’ brother Hasmukhlal (Anand Tiwari).

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