'Theatre opens you up'

FUNNY MAN

Cyrus Sahukar, the comedian and actor, always seems ready to share a laugh. His charm and jokes have won many hearts and he used to do theatre earlier.

Recently, he got a chance to revoke his stage skills by acting in Trivial Disasters with Kalki Koechlin, Purab Kohli and Richa Chadda.  

“The play was a collection of nine stories based on everyday life. This was after a huge gap. It was a whole new beginning and trying something completely different and it felt good. There is no cut in theatre and the feeling of nervousness and the audience’s reactions just keeps you alive,” he says.

Sahukar prescribes the theatre experience to everyone.

“Even if you are doctor or an engineer; you should always do a play in your life. Theatre opens you up,” he says.

He will be seen in movies like Million Dollar Arm which has John Hamn, and Words with God. He has acted in Bollywood movies and feels that films happened strangely in his life. 

“I came from television where there was non-stop work and films seemed to have a lot of sitting around. But that is because in films, 99 per cent of the preparation is off-camera.”

Sahukar says that he found the experience to be fun.

Of all the spoofs Sahukar has been a part of, his favourite is his latest one, The Bench. 

“The thing with spoof is that you know what the joke is, but with The Bench, we’ve tried to create a format which is a thin line between reality and fiction. You’re not sure if it happened or didn’t happen. It’s shot in a ‘mockumentary’ format,” he says.

He says that he likes this genre of spoofs.

“It was a lot of fun,” he says and adds that the project is an ode to all the interviews he has done.

“Usually, the interviewer and the interviewee have a set of questions to be answered, and it becomes mechanical. This series is an ode to what all can possibly go wrong in an interview,” he says.

He talks on his episode with Karan Johar, “I’m grateful to him for doing the interview. I’ve known him for a while, as he is truly gifted in understanding every medium and going for it. He’s also one of the few performers who is fine with making fun of himself.”

About live events and shows, Sahukar says that everything is done last minute there. 

“You have to truly trust your gut in live shows, more than theatre or any other medium,” he says.

“One should always have some backup plans for a live event, since everything that can possibly go wrong with a live event, will go wrong. The most unexpected things will happen. There have been times when the artiste who has to perform went missing and I had to come up with strange games and acts,” he recollects.
 Sahukar says that with this, he has learnt that losing control is the best thing in life. 

“Nothing is in one’s control. If I was on the Titanic, I would just relax.”

So, what makes him laugh?

“Being in the business of comedy sometimes one can become numb to humour, because you start dissecting it. The best part of humour is that it should have no barriers. Sometimes, the silliest things make me laugh and at other times intellectual stuff makes me laugh.”