Funny take on serious issues

Witty Narrative

The Park New Festival experienced a laugh riot as D’Lo, a queer Tamil Sri Lankan-American, performed D’FunQt — a form of intimate theatre, filled with humorous musings, rants and stories of being a queer boy or trans-gendered person.

In his sensitive but humourous act, he shared the realities of his life in the form of coming-out stories. He did a brilliant job, single-handedly entertaining the audience while taking them through his experiences.

These included instances of growing up in a strict Hindu immigrant family without television and facing physical and verbal abuse from his parents, who wanted to marry him to a nice male doctor from a reputed family.  

“When they say coming out is a process, they really mean that it is selective hearing,” laughs D’Lo, as he tells the story of how he had to keep reminding his Amma that he was gay.

All the stories shared have serious implications when one looks at society as a whole. But in the one hour of his performance, he used humour to cover up the queer community’s fight against being defunct, the discrimination they face when it comes to using public toilets and even the fact that there is no acceptable rite of passage for queer people.
The audience was full of people from the LGBT community, who seemed extremely proud to be there to witness his act.

 “It was inspiring and brilliant to see this funny guy speak our minds. The personal connect was very strong and it was interesting to see the reactions of people who were pushed out of their comfort zone during the show,” says a member of the queer community, who did not wish to be named.

Some of his narratives were extremely witty and he proved his worth with lines like, “Amma, I have to get this off my chest,” when confessing to his mother hat he was getting a top surgery done.

The audience seemed to be thoroughly entertained and was in splits all evening. “He was phenomenal! I loved the improvisation he did and his act didn’t seem rehearsed at all. To have an audience gripped while talking about such a topic could be tricky, but he had it all as a performer,” says Parul Sharma, who attended the show.
D’Lo himself was quite happy with the response he got.

“I was slightly apprehensive about doing the show in India, because I didn’t know how people would receive such a form of non-fictional theatre. But I felt quite at home and I am certainlynot disappointed,” shares the young story-teller, after the show.