All about the second act of The October Theatre Fest

Forget the release calendar. This month the drama is happening in person. The October Theatre Fest is back for a second edition, around the plays sit live music and art workshops, and a few pop-up stalls to poke through between acts.

Forget streaming, the stage is calling

Start with the laughs. Ray Cooney’s It Runs in the Family follows a doctor who lies his way from one mess to another. External Affairs brings two questionable matches together just as their toxic exes return. Excess Estrogen, featuring Shikha Talsania, sees six women write, direct and perform short pieces on modern womanhood. Then there’s Dekh Behen 2, where Kanupriya’s vegetarian, alcohol-free wedding is overrun by orthodox in-laws. Two more plays come from Akarsh Khurana. We’ll get to him.

Organiser Krish Kumar is blunt about why any of this exists. Chennai has smaller venues in regular use, he says, but big productions are thin on the ground. “We are looking at filling a void in large format productions that are regularly staged.” And he’s after “a mature audience who love theatre in its purest form,” and the programme backs that up. No risky gambles here, just the traditional stuff the city rarely sees on stage.

Streaming? Different world, he says, and both deserve a place. But “one can never replicate the feel of a live performance to that of something being streamed.” Success, for him, starts with “a full house for every play.” After that come more stalls, more morning workshops and a proper showcase for up-and-coming artistes.

Akarsh Khurana has been circling This Time for years. Alisha and Pranav broke up two decades ago and now they’re headed to a college reunion, along with a crowd of old friends they dread meeting. There was no single spark, he says. “I’d been working with the theme of nostalgia since I wrote The F Word back in 2023. And I’ve actually wanted to do a college reunion play for over a decade.”

He’s in his 40s, and that matters. “I felt we needed more stories about people like me,” he says, stories that look back at a younger time while carrying the weight of having lived a life. Funny thing is, he isn’t a reunion person himself. One of his protagonists feels the same. Still, he says, “Who we were versus who we are now. That’s the crux.”

“Things get complicated, but the play is mostly comforting.” Audiences have proved it. Older viewers have walked out with fond thoughts of an ex, or rung up an old buddy. “So the hope is that you have a good time, and yet something inside you shifts a little.”

His other play is Love, Bombs and Apples, Hassan Abdulrazzak’s comic tale that explores perceptions, politics, and Islamophobia through the everyday lives of three ordinary men, without spelling everything out. “The writing is hilarious, yet thought provoking,” says the director, adding that, “All I had to do was find the right actors, who would get this brand of humour, and have enough of a world view and a grasp of geopolitics to make these words ring true. And while it gets a lot of laughs, the larger picture will never allow it to feel trivial.”

Rs 499 onwards. On till October 4, shows at 5 and 7 pm. At Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall, Chetpet.

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