The Stiff Kittens Medicine Show is in town

One evening, while enjoying a round of drinks with friends, don’t be surprised if there is a police raid. Keep calm, don’t panic. The policemen may reward you with a soul-stirring rendition of Nessun Dorma from Puccini’s Turandot. Get ready Mumbai! The Stiff Kittens Medicine Show is in town.

The show was born last year as an extension of the theatrical performances of the psychedelic disco band Emperor Minge and is the brainchild of composer-cum-keyboardist-cum-actor-cum-DJ Stefan Kaye, who decided that entertainment in India needed a drastic revamp. “Indian audiences are coming of age. They need to be constantly challenged. Our humour is not slapstick; it’s more intellectual,” says Kaye, who founded Emperor Minge three years back. Originally from London, Kaye has been in Delhi for four years.

Medicine shows were common in the US in the 19th century. The performers used to travel by horse and wagon and peddle miracle cures between freak shows, flea circuses, magic tricks and storytelling. The Stiff Kittens’ show was originally produced with the help of the Delhi-based theatre company Tadpole Repertory, with which Kaye had acted in the past. This will be the Kittens’ first visit to Mumbai.

The group retains the medicine-show essence. The acts are correlated by a common theme or concept. Performers appear unexpectedly in acts and individual parts combine and break apart. There are comedians, dance, theatre and music, each act not exceeding 10 minutes. The show works on the concept of shock-and-awe: taking the audience by surprise. You can expect an actress do a dominatrix act, wannabe comedians getting stage fright, a mock police raid, and a drummer impersonating Flash Gordon or a disco jam.

“The show works on improvisation. Sometimes, our acts are decided just hours before the performance,” says Nikhil
Vasudevan, an ‘autistic’ drummer obsessed with symmetry. A part-time copywriter, he believes that this escape from standard entertainment will appeal to those with a penchant for visual flair.
From the introduction to the costumes to the music to the characters, every part of the Stiff Kittens show is designed to grab attention. “I sometimes introduce the acts, which plays a huge part in building up the audience’s expectations and catching their attention,” says Simar Paul, the show’s production manager.

Suman Sridhar is part of the band Sridhar/Thayil and has performed in all Kittens’ shows. “Stiff Kittens is about making art out of the inappropriate. We are bringing raunchy back to Indian shows,” she says. Having done a disco jam and performed an operatic piece, she is looking forward to performing something totally new and unexpected.

So here’s a new kind of entertainment, featuring artistes with diverse forms of expression.

The show will be at the Blue Frog on March 20.