Laughter and loud voices grab your attention as you near the vibrant, board-games-themed cafe in Chennai on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. As you walk in, you find a room full of people standing in two circles. The inner circle stays put while the people in the outer circle move to the right every 40 seconds when the host blows a whistle. That is all the time that one gets to introduce oneself to the person opposite. The trick, the hosts say, is to reveal something truly unique about yourself so that the other person remembers your name. The Hysterical, Chennai’s first all-woman ensemble of comics, kicked off their Sunday jam with this introductory activity.
From Telephone booth, a game that requires four participants to finish sentences from where another has left off, to the popular punchline game Whose line is it anyway, the next two hours were filled with improv games that kept everyone on their toes. Improv comedy is a participatory process where performers make jokes from scratch and rely on the audience's ideas to create spontaneous, unrehearsed scenarios.
The Hysterical is the brainchild of Shalini Vijayakumar (29), a theatre artist since 2010 and the only woman comic to be a part of the Chennai-based improv troupe The Half-Boiled Inc. “I was inspired by a Bangalore-based all-woman improv group called The Adamant Eve,” Shalini recounts, as she shares the story of her improv troupe. The Hysterical’s eight-member ensemble was formed in June this year. With the support of stand-up comic Karthik Kumar and co-founder of Evam comedy Sunil Vishnu K, Shalini held a comedy campaign ‘Feel free to be funny’ to audition candidates. The team also includes producer Ramya, designer Shriya, and Harini, who handles their social media. The group premiered on September 24.
Mixed Jam session hosted by The Hysterical in Chennai. Source: Harini
Even though Shalini learned the ropes of improv comedy from stand-up comic Baggy, she says that it is mostly a self-taught art form. “There are some basic rules for both improv and comedy. If you are going to improvise with someone, you listen, trust the person, and build something together. It is like bricklaying and building. We are forming a picture but we will know what it is only towards the end. We refer to this as group mind, which is what we try to achieve through our practice sessions,” she points out.
The Hysterical’s comics say that each one of them has had different takeaways from their improv performances. For Varsha (23), the art form has helped her explore the craft, while Neha (24) shares she is no longer afraid of performing on stage or failing.
Shalini says that she was keen on forming an all-woman troupe as she believes that gender plays an important role in comedy. “It was not that I felt unsafe at The Half-Boiled Inc, but the dominant thought process would often be male-centred. For example, when we did scenes between a mother and daughter, we would think about a scenario like a mother forcing her daughter into marriage. But when The Hysterical does scenes on the same premise, we are able to delve deeper because it is based on our lived experiences. This is also a drawback as we might get trapped in a bubble. The challenge for us is to break away from that,” she explains.
The team says that they also have to identify and work on the conditioning associated with gender roles. “When we were supposed to pick and perform different actions for one of the improv games, we repeatedly chose cooking, cleaning or other chores while playing a woman, while showing a man reading the newspaper. When we noticed this pattern, we decided to show a man cooking or cleaning the next time,” says Nandita (19), another member of the team.
Several women comics like Aditi Mittal, Sumukhi Suresh, and Neeti Palta have spoken about being typecast as comedians who only discuss topics that are conventionally feminine, or being branded as unfunny because of their gender. Commenting on this, the troupe members say that they tend to repeatedly discuss themes like female friendship, trauma, and motherhood. “We don’t mind it being identified as our brand of comedy. We are performing on these subjects because it is linked to who we are and because our views on many subjects are similar,” says Shalini. Troupe member Keerthana PV (29) adds, “There might be another women’s collective doing something totally different and that is fine. In fact, it would promote healthy competition.”
The Hysterical's rehearsal session. Source: Murshitha/ @capturesbyMurshitha
The comics explain that when a joke on a sensitive matter is made by an all-woman ensemble, the audience understands that it comes not with the motive of shaming, but rather to support the survivor and blame the perpetrator. One of the improvisers, Vinithra Menon (29) adds, “As a format, improv comedy comes with a lot of freedom of speech because we are building a script from scratch.”
The comics believe that their freedom of speech is founded in the trust that the audience has in them. The jam sessions begin with the organisers requesting participants to not be offensive and avoid self-deprecating jokes. Monika Dhayalan (25), who is part of The Hysterical’s main team, jokes that their rehearsals can sometimes feel like therapy sessions as they spend a lot of time discussing where they stand on different subjects.
In addition to planning shows in cities like Coimbatore and Madurai, The Hysterical is also focusing on building a community of women improvisers. “We have performed in Chennai and Bengaluru so far, where the shows were sold out. Many people have come more than once to our jams and shows. We are now trying to attract new audiences,” Shalini says.
Initially, they held jam sessions exclusively for women, but have now started sessions for all genders. The Hysterical hosted its first mixed jam session on Sunday, November 6. “Women who attend our sessions have felt that it is a safe space. We wanted to open it up for everyone without changing that factor. Hence, we decided to admit two people per ticket and made it compulsory for one of them to be a woman,” Shalini points out.
The Hysterical's show. Credit: Photographer Joshua
When asked whether there were noticeable differences between the mixed jams and the ones that were exclusively for women, Saga (24), another member, quips, “It is not very different. Before we begin the session, we usually ask participants how they feel. We were not sure whether men would share how they felt, but they did. It made us realise that it was just a misconception.”
The collective is currently gearing up for its upcoming show on November 19, which will take place at The ARTery in Chennai.