Inside Medai — The Stage in Alwarpet, those who gathered on Sunday were anything but a passive audience. They rose to wish their teacher a good evening, settled in as the lecture unfolded chapter by chapter, and even watched their teacher break into a song she wrote herself, only to have her dive into the crowd to be carried across the room. At one point, people were even asked to pass around a copy of the "study material," examining it as the lesson continued. And at the end of it all, the audiences were all bestowed with a degree.
What lecture? One on Kalacharam. And who taught it? Manjula, the comic persona of actor and theatre practitioner Maya S Krishnan, who was created during a task inside the Bigg Boss Tamil house a couple seasons back. The intent behind the character’s birth was simple: to call out sexism and misogyny by inhabiting the voice of the oppressor and exaggerating its logic to the point of absurdity for it to strike a chord.
Once out of the Bigg Boss house, Maya began to create short-form videos as Manjula and they took social media by storm. Her satirical sketches on everything, from how women should laugh demurely to why menstruation must remain a closely guarded secret, inspired countless lip-syncs, remakes, and shares.
Eventually, bringing this comic persona from the screen to the stage — through a solo standup special titled ‘Pomblel’ — was less a calculated move than an organic evolution, Maya recounted, after performing three back-to-back shows this last weekend.
“I have always wanted to do standup comedy. I see it as a form of theatre; another platform for expression. Besides, all my plays are comedy and are physical. I have toured 100-200 shows of a play. So, Manjula’s entry to live stage was simply organic after the way the YouTube videos boomed,” she shared, adding, “I want to be political and speak about the state of the world and humour has been my catalyst.”
Writing her own sets is not new to Maya as she has long been writing her own lines for contemporary theatre, and even finding her voice while performing koothu. “What I found interesting about the writing this time was finding the joke, the root of the joke, and building it,” she said. Besides, writing for Manjula to perform on a live stage had to also be different from writing for the character to perform to a camera. “YouTube has many cuts. We have worked with some boring sets by playing with the edits, including memes, music, and other ways that digital media allows. But on stage, it is just me and the audience. That part of writing was so fascinating,” Maya added.
What mainly fueled her writing this time was the trust people placed upon her, she admitted, as she had three house-full shows booked even before she completed writing. “It was so encouraging and motivating. I finished my writing in seven days, then we were rehearsing, re-writing, clearing jokes at the last minute, testing the show with friends, and so on,” she shared.
Despite the constraints of a tight deadline, Maya wastes no time in stirring indignation while drawing laughter, effectively fulfilling Manjula’s satirical purpose.
Maya is set to perform next in Music Academy, on August 15 Tickets are available on Ticket 9