Not such a trivial thing

Cyrus Broacha and Richa Chadda

When banal incidents and situations from everyday life are picked up and given a comedic touch, the audience is forced to review their perspective on them. Atul Kumar helmed play, Trivial Disasters deals with different chapters in a common man’s life and transforms them into eight rib-tickling episodes that bring to the fore human absurdities. And when actors, Richa Chadda, Kalki Koechlin, Cyrus Broacha and Purab Kohli take centrestage, playing out myriad roles, the experience is enough to bring the stage down with several hilarious moments. So you have a television chat show with an accomplished serial killer, a man struggling to propose to his girlfriend, a suicide salesman who moonlights as a counsellor, a poet who gets stuck writing traffic slogans, and a woman who negotiates with her husband’s kidnappers. Whether it is playing the role of a typical Indian mother, a saleswoman, a housewife dressing up for a kitty party or a wife negotiating with her husband’s kidnappers, Richa Chadda does it all with panache.
Talking about her experience on stage, Chadda expresses, “Theatre makes me feel free and keeps me on my toes. It is an extremely thrilling experience and live performances give you a different high.” For an actor who has always raised the bar with each character that she has played on screen, be it a Bholi Punjaban in Fukrey, or depicting a character moving seamlessly from a young girl to an aged woman in Gangs of Wasseypur, Chadda once again mesmerised the audience with her electrifying performance on stage.
While, she is no novice to the stage having acted in several theatre productions earlier, the actor who hails from an academic background— her mother has authored two books, Chadda’s true calling, however, was acting as she says, “I wanted to be an actor and felt performing was the only thing I could ever do.”
So, how was the experience sharing the stage with other actors like Kalki, Cyrus and Purab? “It was incredible. Kalki is very hard-working and a seasoned professional. Cyrus is a natural actor. He is a treat to watch and hear. He’s also a very gifted writer and innovator and I admire him immensely. Purab is a charmer. It’s hard to not like him,” says Chadda, who loves Chaplinisque comedy and dark humour. Trivial Disaster has performed in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Nagpur with future shows scheduled in Patna, Indore, Lucknow, Delhi, Kolkata and Pune.