Be ready to laugh your hearts out as seven comedy plays stage 15 to 20 minutes (each) of laughter with no prizes to be won, but only for fun! How cool is that! So, you get to watch seven humorous stories back-to-back, by some talented artistes with no motive whatsoever except for you to have a good laugh. Curated and produced by Poochu’s Productions, Denver Anthony Nicholas tells us that LAL — which stands for ‘Laughable Asanine and Ludicrous’ — is a part of their anthology series. “We have done Deadly Seven in the past based on seven mortal sins; we recently did Once Upon a Musical, our music anthology. This time, we wanted to do something around comedy, and so we have LAL, our first comedy anthology. This is not a competition or a festival; LAL is for everyone to come and have some fun together.”
The participating groups in LAL include Theatre Nisha, Mirrorz Theatre, Masquerade — the performance group, Sushant Alexander, Prashant Oliver, Red Nose Theatre group, and Kael Theatre. The plays are an interesting take on different styles of comedy ranging from dark humour to physical comedy, mostly in English and Tamil.
Meera Sitaraman from Theatre Nisha tells us about the play Tax Mahal, which she has written and directed, “The play is based on a true event that happened last year. The ASI was served notices by the corporation to pay house tax and water bills for the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort. I found it a perfect ground to devise a comedy script out of.” She adds, “Working on a comedy script is always fun. It has everyone bringing their sense of humour on stage, and we sure have some funny people in the group.”
Sushant Alexander, who has directed Stolichnaya, tells us, “Two friends meet up, get drunk, discuss politics and its effects on our lives with comical consequences. For me, art should reflect the times we live in; Stolichnaya is all about that, presented in a funny fashion.”
The play Siraiadal by Roshan V G from Red Nose Theatre is about ‘the cold night conversation between four prisoners who all are going to face the most important phase in their life next day’. “This script was very interesting when I read it because the circumstances of the story revolve around life in prison. The script by Divagar is crisp and fast-paced, which made me fall in love with it as I could visualise the scenes,” says Roshan, who has directed the play.
The Merger, directed by Krishna Kumar from KK Masquerade — the performance group — is a funny, but not top of the head ‘hahaha’ slapstick play, about the millennials and ways they corporatise even the simplest of things in life, to express themselves, without feeling embarrassed. “It is laced with cerebral humour both in situation and expressions. We chose to do this because it fits into this evening of anthology; and would help broaden the variety of approaches to the genre of comedy,” says Krishna, adding, “It was originally written in the ’90s when it had an immediate relevance. Now, there’s a bit of distance from the millennials since we have moved on to the Next Gen. It would thus be interesting to see how this kind of humour appeals to the contemporary Chennai audience.”
Tickets at Rs 300 & Rs 500.
October 15, 4 pm & 7pm.
Alliance Française of Madras, Nungambakkam.
Email: rupam@newindianexpress.com
Twitter: @rupsjain
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