Plots turning shorter

It also encourages actors to develop and showcase their talents by playing multiple roles while allowing audiences to enjoy a broad spectrum of theatre in one sitting.

In keeping with this formula, Black and White, a collection of eight short plays and comedy sketches was staged by a young Bangalore-based theatre group called Cult Entertainment recently.

Chosen from a work by Anton Chekhov and the more contemporary Rowan Atkinson, there were ‘various shades of humour — light and dark that ran through the show’.

Marked by dry wit, surprise endings, and common people in confrontations with ‘superiors’ often ending in absurdity, the on-stage action moved quickly without stagnating.

Fatal Beatings, which had quintessential Rowan Atkinson humour, was a bizarre tale about a headmaster who beats a student to death, for stealing library books. He then has to break the news of the boy’s death to his father.

A Good Loser is a comic take on an actor losing the best actor award to his co-star and being asked to receive the award on his behalf. Losing my Patients, is a sketch about a patient who doesn't know what's wrong with him and a doctor who doesn't care.

Anton Chekhov generally portrayed life in the small town Russia where tragic events occur in a minor key, as a part of everyday existence. His characters are passive by-standers in regard to their lives, filled with the feeling of hopelessness and the fruitlessness of all efforts.

In Surgery, a wannabe waits for a patient to pluck his first tooth.  The Arrangement has a father taking his shy 19-year-old son to a house of ill repute, then realising that the son will no longer be a boy.

Audition is about an aspiring small town actor dreaming about making it big. Seduction, another Anton Chekhov play, is a live practical demonstration on how to seduce a woman with a little help from her husband.

The cast comprised Naveen Richard, Ajit Thandur, Supriya,  Anirudh Acharya, Sindhu Murthy, Avinash Daniel and Karan Tilak.