Hush

On the sets of India’s first silent comedy show in Malad,the cast and crew have the responsibility of invoking laughter among their viewers even as they carry forward the story quietly. The weekly show will be premiered on Friday at 8.30 pm on SAB TV. Six of its episodes have already been canned. The silence,however,is meant only for the small screen. The set is noisy with technicians setting up cameras and lights for the next shot while the actors go through the script.

What’s the point of a script when there are no dialogues? Apparently,not much. While any normal 30-minute show will have a script of around 30 pages,this script is exactly three-page-long. It just gives some basic directions and a rough idea about what will happen in the scene. The actors take off from there—depicting the comic situations that ensue in a crazy household,their complicated relationships and wacky neighbours.

Legends like Charlie Chaplin,Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as well as animated characters like Tom and Jerry have regaled viewers across the world with their silent comic acts for decades. However,it took Prabal Barua,who has written and directed Gutur Gu,to deviate from the thriller and horror formats to conceptualise India’s first such show. “I had this idea for nearly a decade. But it seemed workable only recently,” says the director of popular shows like CID and Aahat.

Barua’s move has made the actors very happy. They love the fact that they don’t have to spend their breaks learning their lines,“I now feel talking is too stressful. I will start charging more money just to say those lines in other shows,” jokes Grower,the show’s central character.

Once the actors get the script,they huddle around a table. Sipping on steaming cups of tea,they brainstorm on how to execute the scene. “There are a lot of technicalities involved. When there is a wide-angle shot and we have no support of words,we have to plan our movements in such a way that it doesn’t look unnatural,” says Grower.

While people have already started wondering about similarities between Gutur Gu and that of Chaplin’s as well as Laurel and Hardy’s,Barua says,“There is no comparison.” While those shows revolved around one person and basically involved miming,Gutur Gu steers clear of making the actors do anything that doesn’t appear real. “It’s a story of a normal family and it so happens that no situation throws up a need for dialogues. There are times when they speak,but the audience cannot hear them because there is a loud band passing by or something. It’s not like these people never talk,we just don’t need to hear them,” Barua says. In case someone feels the absence of words,the show has music. “There’s a lot of background music to help get across the mood as well,” the director says.