Yes, they strayed from the path

Wake up, tuitions, breakfast, classes, lunch, more tuitions, come home, homework, dinner, study some more, sleep — and then repeat the cycle — was your life any different growing up As products of the Indian education system, with its glorification of medicine and engineering, choosing a career path in the fine arts, acting, music or anything unconventional is frowned upon. Black sheep of the family Yes, we are! And proudly so.

That’s how theatre group Stray Factory felt as well. Under ‘Enna da Rascalas’, their online channel, they will be releasing their first, original web series, titled Black Sheep, next week. A part of ‘Laughter Games’, a comedy series by YouTube, the web series released its trailer on Thursday, getting more than 2,000 views overnight!

For the makers, the series was more than just comedy — it had to be young, urban and honest, says Mathivanan Rajendran, producer of the series and founder of the theatre group. It follows the story of an engineering student who doesn’t want to be one, and is confused about what he wants to do. Directed by Vivek Krishna Ramanujam and written by Bhargav Prasad, Black Sheep features Shyam Renganathan as the lead, Vaishwath Shankar as his best friend and Sindhuri Nandhakumar as his girlfriend. City-based musicians Kaber+Tenma have provided the music for the project.

Here’s the quirky part; it is based on a true story — Shyam’s! The RJ and theatre artiste had dropped out of college after he realised engineering wasn’t his cup of tea, and it was through theatre that he rediscovered himself. “I just want to address the fact that it’s okay to be confused and not know what you want to do. We come from an educational system where you have to ask permission to even go to the bathroom!” he adds.

On the script-writing process, Bhargav reveals that they didn’t have a plan to take inspiration from Shyam’s life initially. “I have never seen a good representation of urban youth in film or television and we wanted to change that. Even Vaishwath’s character is an extension of myself, as Shyam and I are best friends in real life. I haven’t written anything this real before, so it feels extremely personal,” he muses.

The story also strikes a chord with Sindhuri, who tells us that she relates to it a lot because she has had to defend her ambitions to her family as well! “It depicts the awkward and ungainly journey towards realising our ‘goals’, dreams and passions. The experience has been really meaningful,” she says.

However, it’s not just the plot that pushes boundaries. Using live sound and real locations as opposed to dubbing and sets, was a challenge, says director Vivek. “We made the decision to use live sound and it was only during shooting that we realised how hard it was,” he laughs. Turns out, switching off all fans and sealing the room against ambient noise in the Chennai heat, was a bad idea. “Most important thing we needed to highlight was developing the soul of the series — the chemistry between the characters. If the audience believes the characters, then they will want to see more episodes. We treated it as a feature film; not as a web series,” he concludes.