After a three-year break, South Asian sketch comedy troupe I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter Chicken returns with a new show, Aug. 13 at the Cultch, as part of the inaugural Monsoon Festival of Performing Arts.
According to co-writer Munish Sharma, the group, which began in 2010 with a team including co-writers Leena Manro and Kallol Mitra, went on hiatus in 2013 to “focus on personal growth.”
Inspired by the 1990s BBC sketch comedy series Goodness Gracious Me, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter Chicken explores different issues and topics from South Asian culture through singing, dance, Bollywood and short comedy skits.
The sketches highlight certain stereotypes, superstitions and norms within the Desi community, and present them with light comedy to inform and educate people. (Desi is a loose term for the people of South Asia — Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka — and their diaspora.)
“Laughter and love and music and passion are universal,” says Manro. “We look into these areas to speak the universal language.”
According to Sharma, a lot of great comedy comes from truth. “Comedy is sometimes best way to show what is going on. We do our best to have some type of truth to what we are talking about.”
Having a diverse cast from different nationalities and religions, the troupe hopes to attract an equally multicultural audience.
While past sketches have delved into such heavy topics as domestic violence and the different treatment of boys and girls within South Asian culture, many of the troupe’s new sketches explore racial diversity.
“Just by talking about it, it makes taboo issues much easier to talk about,” says Manro.
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter Chicken is part of the South Asian Arts Society, which provides opportunities to professional and amateur artists and produces the Monsoon Festival, which runs Aug. 11 to 21 in Vancouver and Surrey.
Other performances include Dipti Mehta’s one-woman play Honour: Confessions of a Mumbai Courtesan, Anu Yadav’s Meena's Dream and Kehar Singh Di Maut (The Death of Kehar Singh). Details at moonsoonartsfest.ca.
