‘Why so Serious?’ and ‘My Daughter Yellow Water’ will make you laugh and think at the same time

A monthly curated show, Spotlight,  presented by Chennai Art Theatre, is a concept where upcoming directors are encouraged to come up with new plays.  “Through this initiation, we would like to create more opportunities for every artiste,” says Juvith Arthi, curator of Spotlight.

In its third edition, the event is presenting  two plays, each with 30 minutes of stage time.While Harish Uthaman’s  Why so Serious? is a spoof of different movies weaved into a comic story, Kavin DM’s My Daughter Yellow Water is a dark comedy that highlights myths and superstitions around puberty.  
In Why so Serious? a group of friends who live together in a men’s hostel  struggling to pay their monthly rent to their warden, encounter him on a bad day. Finding it difficult to make ends meet, they plan a heist together to settle the debt. But will they be able to pay him back? “The play has a lot of punchlines and through the characters, the audience will come to realise that there are spoofs of different movies and shows put together. It’s going to be a hilarious show,” says Harish, who admits being nervous about his debut as a director. “I am acting in this too, and I have also written it. I decided on a comedy for my directorial debut because I thought a full-length drama would be difficult to fit into a 30-minute time slot.”

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Meanwhile, Kavin’s play, My Daughter Yellow Water shows a fierce father, a dumb mother, a venomous aunt, an idiotic arrogant uncle, an innocent one-sided lover, and an educated foreign return guy engage in a feud  over a girl in the family hitting puberty. As chaos ensues, Kavin explains what he intends to show through this play. “The girl ‘my daughter’ reaches puberty on a Tuesday on the 13th of a month. Now, these days are considered very  inauspicious and are enveloped in superstitions. The plot progresses to show how the family shies away from disclosing this fact to the neighbours around,” says the writer-director, adding, “It’s a dark comedy; I am only showing facts about the society; and how puberty is perceived. My intention is not to educate anyone because I think everyone knows about these rituals and myths; what I wanted was to pick a taboo subject and mirror the truths.” The play however, Kavin, who is also a graphic designer, tells us, is  laced with subtle comedy. 

Rs 300 onwards.
August 5. 4 pm & 6.30 pm. 
At Medai — The Stage, Alwarpet.
 
 rupam@newindianexpress.com
 @rupsjain

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