A Sunday with the bountiful bloggers…
Jun 9th
Tring Tring!! the phone rang…Aargh what a clichéd way to start a post. Add to it the fact that nowadays phones don’t tring tring anymore. Let me accept the fact about my ring tone, it is the nasal scream for help – “Aap ka suroor” by Reshammiya. Not that I am any fan of the capped crusader I just kept it as a revenge on my team mate who has some melodramatic mallu song, which at times sounds like subhrabadham.
Coming back to the point, I cut short the scream from himesh with a hello and on the other end I had this person from our Rebelz PR Team, she was pretty excited. Seeing her excited voice I thought probably we had clinched a deal with 20th century fox for next 4 productions, but it was something else.. nevertheless as interesting as it. Indibloggers, the premiere Indian bloggers directory was planning to have a meet in Chennai and they wanted to know if we could do a show for them.
I started discussing it with other team members; now don’t visualize some 4-5 guys meeting and discussing over a cuppa coffee. In Rebelz parlance a discussion is a long mail thread where everyone gives their 2 cents, at times these 2 cents go on for 2 pages. The excitement factor caught on with others too, because we had not done any private shows and have only done public performances
The team almost came to a positive conclusion, except for our egoistic bum of a script writer[yeah its yours truly] who felt 15mins is too less to show his story building abilities. Finally there was a vote and the results was a 10-0 in favor of doing the show [actually I abstained from voting]
The reasons for wanting to do the show were aplenty. Two years back I was suffering from this compulsive impulsive blogging addiction [the deadliest disease after the one suffered by Rajesh Khanna in the movie Anand]. I used to put up 2 posts a day, keep refreshing them and make sure my comments count reaches 50[by commenting under different names of coz!!], so a show for the blogging community was something which appealed not just to me, but to the other avid bloggers in Rebelz team. Adding to this reason is the fact that more people will come to know about Rebelz .
Once we decided to go ahead, the theme and script were decided with two night outs. As it was a blogger meet we decided the theme will be around few bloggers being kidnapped. As for the characters we did not go too far for that, zeroed in on the funniest and most well received characters of our previous plays to go ahead. With the work for our next production “Once Upon a Time in Arabia” going in full zeal we did not want to interrupt it having rehearsals in weekends so again the rehearsals too took place at nights. Thanks to June, there are so many wedding mohoorthams around and any one of our parents would be going in for some wedding in other cities, leaving the house at our mercy.
The rehearsals were as always loads of fun..there were some lines for which we really ROFL-ed making the ground floor neighbors to lodge complaints once parents came back. One of those lines..
Pat – the chronic virgin to his kidnapper Vijay Ballya – “Can you please set me up a date with Katrina Kaif”
Vijay ballya Retorts back – “Katrina Kaif? you wont even get Mohammad Kaif!!”
It was so tough to keep guys in control and continue with the rehearsals. And yeah a special mention about our Vijay ballya, for whom this was the first time on stage. He was so nervous during the rehearsals that on one occasion he was trying to use the charger point in mobile for inserting the headphones plug and wasted 2 cigarettes by lighting the wrong ends. But on stage…man he simply rocked.
Coming to the most important part of this short n sweet production..hmmm… yeah on the final count it is the most important factor.. because more than spreading the Rebelz brand, more than experimenting our abilities in doing a 15min sketch where we can present memorable characters…this factor counts. And that is the audience reaction.
Awesome is the word which can come close to description.The bloggers surely had a wonderful sense of humor. They applauded, laughed, cheered and did everything which a performer wants on stage. All those dreary eyed night-out efforts attained their worth, thanks to their wonderful response. The video recording of the performance and the responses still gives us goose bumps. Is there anything more you need for a perfect weekend?
A very very special thanks to Renie and Santhoshini for making us put up this memorable show
A sunday with laughs…
May 20th
An idyllic Sunday evening and nothing much to do as the Rebelz rehearsals for the next production “Once upon a time long long ago” had just started off and yet to pick up steam.
I was fiddling with lots of options right from watching Jimmy to Arasangam to an IPL match. Off late the last option i.e the IPL has been banned at my house, for the simple reason that my 18 month old nephew is mimicking the act of cheerleaders. Leaving aside our genetic similarities I seriously opine that the future generation surely knows what to watch.
After drinking some coke [hope they would sponsor our next show for this brand building exercise] and getting some sanity I decided to go to KK’s play “Laughter without frills -4”. Before going to the show I presumed this is the 4th sequel of the play and was apprehensive if I would understand it as I had missed the first 3 parts. But since I am the one who read harry potter series from seventh part to first, in that order; I was confident it would be a cake walk for me.
Reached Sivagami Pethatchi, the venue for the show by 7 PM and once again after some more mind fiddling settled for a 200 bucks ticket. With inflation at its heights a 100 bucks would only get me a seat in the balcony which being a self proclaimed theatre enthusiast didn’t augur well for my ego.
Once in the venue I realized the 4 at the end of the name did not suggest a sequel number, but the number of sketches for the evening. So it was Laughter without Frills for the next 90 odd minutes.
The four plays, more of monologues highlighted the importance of all the components..err…did that sound like a techie.. I mean all the elements needed for a good play viz.,. able actors, strong script, director, casting and of course some brilliant lighting. These made sure that the audience was not just in splits but glued on to the stage [even braving a small power blackout for 3mins] throughout the evening.
A quick look at the four hilarious plays/sketches:
Pub Crawl
Two interesting pub-struck monologues running in parallel. Simple script – most of what probably crosses sloshed minds – brought out beautifully by the two actors. The male version and the female version were two sides of the same coin.
The lights co-ordination was great and though the subject touched a few tricky topics, humor made it come through with ease. Casting Karan Ram made things really gel in; he had the normal Chennai dude slang and attitude. The situations he spoke about was something every guy could relate to. Not too sure if all the situations mentioned by Namrata were related to by the fairer sex in the audience, though it got equal if not more applauds and laughs.
Hurricane Shoba
An interesting monologue where the actor shares with the audience all the war of words between her mother and her. The actor mimicked the mother perfectly, complete with all the hesitations mums have while taking their daughters through the ‘facts of life’. I’m sure most mothers and daughters in the audience related to every word of the monologue.
This being a hold-your-stomach-and-laugh kinda comedy had most of them screaming with laughter.
Deep Freeze
Interesting take on typical fascinations we have for everything that’s not ‘Made in India’. The actor playing the housewife was totally crazy about the deep freezer her sister had sent her from the US. She froze just about everything she could lay her hands on in that freezer. The husband and his deep freezer woes made the audience laugh more than cry!!! This was more of a mature comedy which also has a take on the laziness of women [All those screaming MCP are welcome to stage a protest at Pethatchi on July 27th, 2008, at least then we will have crowds for our show].
It was great seeing Mathi back on stage after a pretty long time [at least for me as an irregular theatre audience ...I mean as the theatre enthusiast]. The one thing which made me a bit skeptical was the voice indexing of the actors, not sure if it would have reached everyone as I had to strain my ears at some moments. Based on personal experience Pethatchi is one of the trickiest audis to perform, looks compact but at times we get deceived. Since the lines got the intended laughs I presume the voice should have been loud enough.
Damini the Damager
Yet another humorous monologue by a young lady filmmaker from the US working on a movie about arranged marriages. The actor took the audience through the typical prelude to every arranged marriage – the shy saree clad girl with the famous tea tray walking up to the happily confused boy and his parents. The expressions and witty commentary while taking the audience through how ‘Damini the Damager’ starts off on her anti-arranged marriage mission added to the great fun.
Right from the day I had seen Masquerade’s “Parrot Lies” I had been a rather ardent fan of KK and his story telling abilities. So with not one but four plays by him, it was a complete feast.
Laughter without Frills surely succeeded in keeping its audience engaged. The smart usage of minimalistic props, lights and sounds showed how the creator of a play can pull off a show with the budget knife hanging on him [Seriously hope my director is reading this]. Thanks to that coke it was an evening which made me forget my credit card and telephone bills to laugh without frills.
A special thanks to Priya for helping me to put this up.