Chennai is a city where “jingle writers become Oscar winners, actors become Chief Ministers and bus conductors become superstars.” So, it is, after all, as good a city as any to dream and dare to pursue them. This is why Shyam Renganathan decided to drop out of an engineering college to follow his heart. It is also why Rascalas, entertainment company Stray Factory’s YouTube channel, decided to base their latest web series, Black Sheep , on his story.
For anyone plugged into Chennai’s live performance circuit, Shyam’s story is familiar. He performs a play on how he quit college to act, and also does a stand-up comedy routine on how his mother rightly predicted that the entire city would laugh at him if he chose to quit engineering. Now, the 22-year-old who gave up a “secure degree” to pursue his love for performance stars in a web series based on his life.
“We just wanted to narrate a fun, urban, real, slice-of-life tale, and Shyam’s story is a good template for that. Besides, half the production team is also made up of engineers who figured that their interests lay elsewhere. So, we are all, effectively, black sheep,” laughs producer Mathivanan Rajendran (Mathi). The series, which is three episodes old, narrates the tale of a young man heading towards his first win.
There is no over-the-top drama in this show; it offers some witty writing (Bhargav Prasad), laced with Tamil as is usually spoken in any urban household, great cinematography (Niketh Bommi) and an honest look at the urban lifestyle of a young adult, warts and vices intact, with directors Vivek Ramanujam and Naveen Kumar at the helm.
“Urban life is not adequately represented in Tamil cinema,” says Mathi. The stereotyping, he feels, is standard. Black Sheep , on the other hand, presents all the grey areas in a young adult’s life with a matter-of-fact air. As a result, many urban 20-somethings find an immediate connect with the tale of a young man who is confused.
“Shows like this find their own niche, which is how the web works. Soon, people will hopefully start accepting the digital space as one with its own pace. A lots of 18- to 25-years-olds go to the cinemas and don’t identify with the characters they see on screen. Since we don’t have to follow a commercial template as with film or television, many new writers will also get to present fresh stories to the audience,” says Mathi.
For now, the team is educating the audience on the web series. “We are doing promotional videos and behind-the-scenes reels, and uploading live videos on Facebook,” explains Mathi. Also, popular actor Janaki Sabesh plays the urban mother, while Jeeva Ravi dons the role of the strict army-man father and Shankar Sundaram plays the Head of Department at a college. “These popular actors will be a bridge for film viewers to check out the series as well,” says Mathi.
Black Sheep is an original series by city-based troupe Stray Factory, supported by LaughterGames. The show is available on the YouTube channel Rascalas.
