Event: NCPA Cheer! Comedy Festival
Laughter is definitely the best medicine and NCPA is helping you laugh all weekend, with the NCPA Cheer! Comedy Festival. Yamini Walia finds out more
If you missed the last edition, this is going to be good news for you. NCPA Cheer! Comedy Festival, a one-of-a-kind, one-stop destination for all things comic is back with its third edition, at the NCPA this weekend. The festival features some of the funniest comedians in a number of acts such as stand-up comedy, commedia dell’arte, comic plays and even musical comedy. Kunal Roy Kapoor, Anuvab Pal, Tanmay Bhat, Rohan Joshi, Sorabh Pant and Aditi Mittal are some of the names that will be participating in the festival.
The premiere of two new plays, Two Adorable Losers and Bombed, will take place on the opening weekend of the festival. Two Adorable Losers revolves around a professor from Odisha and his Mumbai-based student, both of whom suffer from an inferiority complex. They both seek each other’s help to regain their lost confidence, resulting in an unusual and hilarious alliance between the two. The 80-minute play, written and directed by Abhishek Pattnaik, will take place at The Experimental theatre. It stars Abhishek himself, along with Karan Bhanushali.
Another 90-minute play, The World is Enough, promises to be the highlight of the festival as it features Papa CJ and Anuvab Pal. Papa CJ is the only Indian comedian to feature on NBC’s reality show Last Comic Standing. Anuvab Pal is a playwright with several well-known plays such as Chaos Theory and The President Is Coming in his kitty and he was also the screenwriter of Loins of Punjab. The play will be performed at the Godrej Dance Theatre.
The Open Couple, which will take place at the Experimental Theatre, opens with Antonia as a suicidal emotional wreck and tracks her journey, through a series of funny, poignant vignettes, ending with a complete character reversal. The highlight of this play is an interplay of dualities in the politics of relationships. The play is directed by Faraz Khan, scripted by Dario Fo, written with Franca Rame and stars Anuj Gurwara and Vaishali Bisht.
Funny Women, a 90-minute play, features Aditi Mittal, Anu Menon and Kaneez Surka and will take you through different styles of comedy in a single show and will be staged at the Godrej Dance Theatre.
Bombed is a light-hearted play that looks at today’s laid-back urban youth, the city we live in, religion, and how our paranoia about terrorism warps our lives and relationships with our neighbours and friends. The play will be showcased at The Experimental Theatre and is directed by Adhaar Khurana, written by Asha Duggal and Bobby Nagra and stars Aseem Hattangady, Chaitnya Sharma, Lucky Vakharia and Amey Wagh.
Music of Comedic Proportions is a 90-minute play that features comedians performing their jokes while playing a musical instrument in a rhyme scheme. The cast includes Kenneth Sebastian, Kanan Kill, Aadar Malik and Abish Mathew.
We’re sure that by now, you’re as excited as we are for this overdose of comedy!
Tickets Rs 200-Rs 500
When June 8 to June 15
Where NCPA, Nariman Point
Contact www.ncpamumbai.com