Kumar: Stripped Bare — big shout out

It’s not every day one gets to write the script for a com­pletely sold out show.

It’s been such priv­i­lege to help write Kumar’s show (which closed last night), and I only wish the run was longer so’s more peo­ple could’ve watched it.

It’s also been an extremely reward­ing expe­ri­ence inter­view­ing Kumar for a week at the begin­ning of this project, lis­ten­ing to his life sto­ries, of which there were so many that there was the added task of pick­ing which ones to put in the show.

What made it fun also was the fact that it wasn’t just one way traf­fic — Kumar learned from me about the lack of Tamil direc­tional sig­nage at the Air­port, while I learned that “Lingam” is a sym­bol used in the wor­ship of Shiva, and which is some­times por­trayed as a phal­lic symbol.

To cor­rect Nali­nee (just a lit­tle bit), the script wasn’t quite ‘well researched’ — it was more like the prod­uct of many good chats with Kumar.

There were also incred­i­ble moments where Kumar, beyond all expec­ta­tions, took offence at a pro­posed punch­line because it was too racist.

Thank you very much Selena, Kumar, Maniam (The Tabla Man), every sin­gle one from Dream Acad­emy, and every sin­gle crew mem­ber that made this show rock.