Photo Flash: Sneak Peek at CHEER! Comedy Festival, Coming to NCPA June 14

Mumbai gets set to welcome the second edition of the Cheer! Comedy Festival this June, at The National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA), India's premier institution for arts and culture. After it's hugely appreciated debut last year, Cheer! will include a bunch of funny premiering plays, stand-up comedy, workshops and a lot more from this genre. While humour has always been an important part of theatre in India, Cheer! looks to pay tribute to the wave of irreverent, satirical and often topical wit that has laced the rise of the stand-up comedy genre over the past few years. Scroll down for a sneak peek at the show!

The festival opens with Balancing ACT Productions' 2+2, a collection of four short plays and goes on to Silly Point's Couple of Fools, and Akvarious's My Romantic History. The stand-up comedy segments feature Anuvab Pal's brand-new act, The Nation Still Wants to Know and comic gigs by East India Co.medy and Improv by The Ministry of Schtick. The programme also includes two highly interactive workshops by East India Co.medy and The Ministry of Schtick on June 15th and 16th.

Conceptualized by Deepa Gahlot, Head - Programming (Theatre & Films), NCPA, the three-day festival attempts to introduce audiences and participants to various aspects of comedy. She says, "After the super response to last year's festival, this year we have taken the programming up a notch, with humour always at the core of this storm of comic delights."

Cheer! Comedy Festival: June 14-16, 2013

PLAYS

2+2 (Duration 90 min)

Friday, June 14th @ 6.30 pm

Experimental Theatre

A hilarious collection of four short plays involving seemingly normal situations that have outrageous outcomes! In 'Surprise!', two parents are in for an interesting turn of events when their daughter comes visiting! 'Daddy Diaries' captures the awkward moment when a Dad meets his daughter's beau! 'Therapy Anyone?' is about a confused bunch of patients with an even more confusing doctor. And 'Till Death' is gravestone comedy (if that's even a thing!) at its best!

A Balancing Act Production

Written & Directed by Divya Palat

Cast: Denzil Smith, Aditya Hitkari, Vivan Bhathena, Michael Nazareth, Sanket Mhatre, Rashi Mal, Nitasha Malhotra, Gaurav Soni, Divya Palat, Abhishek Krishnan, Vikram Shah, Amar Gupta, Neha Chahar and others

Couple of Fools (Duration: 90 min with Interval)

Experimental Theatre

Saturday, June 15, 6.30 pm

(For Adults only)

The play is set in modern times and revolves around a group of couples who give their account and interpretations of what a relationship is meant to be.

You don't need a counselor, a sexpert or even your best friend to give you advice about your relationship. All you need is a 'Couple of Fools' to advice you on love, lust, fetish, dating and romance. The play unravels the cornered-undisclosed whacky desires of this woman and her two men. The side-splitting comedy is proof that opposites really do attract, but can't seem to fathom how!

A Silly Point Production

Directed by: Meherzad Patel

Cast: Danesh Irani, Maanvi Gagroo, Sajeel Parakh

My Romantic History

Experimental Theatre

Sunday, 16th June, 6.30 pm

"If you haven't met someone by the time you graduate, you're going to marry some idiot from your work. Do you know how they get animals to breed in captivity? They put them in the same cage."

When Sid starts a new job, he doesn't expect that after-work drinks will lead to a drunken and clumsy one-night stand with his new workmate Rhea. But suddenly Sid and Rhea find themselves locked into a relationship neither wants. Hovering in the background are the ghosts and regrets of their romantic pasts. My Romantic History is a sharp, sassy and hilarious comedy about how awful we can be to each other, especially when we're together.

An Akvarious Production

Written by: DC Jackson

Adapted by Adhir Bhat and Bobby Nagra

Directed by Adhaar Khurana

Cast: Hussain Dalal, Priyanshu Painyuli, Shikha Talsania and others

An Akvarious Production

STAND UP COMEDY

The Nation Still Wants To Know (Duration 90 min)

Godrej Dance Theatre

Friday 14th June, 8 pm

Playwright Anuvab Pal's new stand-up comedy show has jokes on the inherent pitfalls of being Bengali, and how that means a different thing from other Indian communities. He compares the world of old India with hilarious insights on Doordarshan, British accents and Indian Airlines with the world of new India with its tweets, fashion designers, fancy new two BHKs and Arnab Goswami.

In The Nation Still Wants To Know, he is joined by Delhi comedian and cartoonist Rajneesh Kapoor. Together, they come up with very funny observations about what makes us uniquely Indian. Like how we are a country of negotiation, how we behave at nightclubs, how we pay the bill, how we deal with money, how The British Empire happened to us, how we say one thing and mean another and many other uproarious observations about little everyday Indian things.

Virgin Pants: "Plucking the Cherry of new jokes and comedians!" (Duration: 90 min)

Godrej Dance Theatre

Saturday 15th June, 8 pm

"Friends, Romans, Countrymen. Lend me your ears" - Marc Anthony's opening line at the first Virgin Pants Open Mike. He never got selected and stabbed the judge instead.

The East India Co.medy brings to you Virgin Pants - a Pro/Am open mike night like no other. It features 10 new comedians who have been trained at EIC's comedy workshop and been selected to face up against each other. The winner of this night gets a paid slot at one of EIC's numerous shows across the country and gets to buy samosas in celebration of their grand win.

Along with this, it will also feature some of India's top comics (Sorabh Pant, Kunal Rao, Azeem Banatwalla, Atul Khatri) try out brand new jokes. With their reputations at stake, it's a test to the finish to see who are the true amateurs and the true comedians! The show will be anchored by Sahil Shah and Sapan Verma.

The Ministry Of Schtick Improv (Duration 110 min with Interval)

Godrej Dance Theatre

Sunday 16th June, 8 pm

The show is written and performed by a veritable cast of comedy superstars. At the helm is Ash Chandler, who besides being one of India's first and most popular English language stand-up comedians is also a popular singer, actor and a composer -- in short, a complete entertainer.

The Ministry of Schtick is a group of comedians who perform standup comedy, sketch comedy and improvised comedy. Presenting their own brand of comedy, they leave every show with a bloody trail of busted guts and teary eyes in their wake.

The Ministry of Schtick has performed over a 100 shows all over India. The group includes Karan Talwar, Brij Bhakta, Varun Thakur and Aadar Malik and Neville Shah.

The brainchild of Ash Chandler, The Ministry of Schtick is a comedy collective and a compilation of some of the country's the best comedians, writers, performers, musicians and just straight-up goofy people!

Workshops

Finding The Funny: A Stand-Up Comedy Workshop

Godrej Dance Theatre

June 15, 2-5 pm

After its phenomenal success last year, we're bringing back The East India Co.medy's popular stand-up comedy workshop, Finding The Funny! , that has toured a number of colleges and corporates. In the workshop Sorabh Pant, Kunal Rao and co. introduce you to stand-up comedy and help write and perform your first ever set for stage. Maybe Sorabh and Kunal will learn something as well! Some of the participants will also be chosen to perform at the show in the evening and stand to win paid slots with The East India Co.medy!

Registration Fee: Rs. 1500/- (Rs 1000/- for Students)

Registrations open on May 1

The Ministry Of Schtick Improv Workshop

Godrej Dance Theatre

June 16, 11am to 4pm (With a break)

Improv is an organic form of theatre where there are no scripts and The Players act out scenes on the spot, sometimes based on audience suggestions. The workshops will be aimed enhancing the awareness of the participants with regard to the basic and most fundamental principles of Improvisation. The workshop focuses on helping the participants with the key elements that are implicitly required to create an improve scene. This is achieved through various Improv exercises that are specifically designed to target each of the elements. The participants learn the basic and elementary steps to be taken while starting an Improv scene.

This introductory workshop is aimed at helping the participants let go of their inhibitions about making mistakes on stage, in fact to enhance the fact that a mistake has occurred and to work around it and include it in the scene. Exercises are also used to help them use their physicality while creating the characters for the scenes, also to differentiate between characters in case they end up playing multiple characters in a scene. Such exercises are used as an effective tool to make the participants let their imagination run wild and ground even the most absurd ideas into the most believable universe and real characters.

Registrations open on May 1. To use the online booking facility, simply log on to the NCPA official website: http://www.ncpamumbai.com/buy-tickets or visit www.bookmyshow.com.

Opening its doors to the world in 1969, the NCPA became the first multi-venue and multi-purpose cultural centre to be built in South Asia. Vibrant and diverse, the NCPA today is recognized by artistes, patrons and media alike as India's premier performing arts institution. The Centre provides a fine showcase for India's rich performing arts traditions, all thanks to the institution's training and research initiatives.

The NCPA presents over 600 events each year across all major art forms, most notably Indian Music, International Music, Theatre and Film, Dance, and Literature, Visual Arts and Photography. There are Heads of Programming for each of these art forms who curate innovative events and festivals; representative of everything from classical to contemporary throughout the year. The NCPA produces its own programmes as well as collaborates with leading cultural promoters from around the world.

For further information log on to www.ncpamumbai.com.

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