On stage, Venkatesh Harinathan is a laugh riot. He heckles his audience, cracks PJs with panache and makes up many jokes on-the-go. But off stage, he’s a different person. “The effort of doing something on stage is so monumental that off stage, I get very silent,” says the actor, popularly called Venky. “This is where the term pseudo-extrovert comes to play; the stage lets me be any character I create.”
Venky is an actor, humorist and YouTuber. Wait, YouTuber? “When I met Mathivanan Rajendran and started performing with Stray Factory full-time, we realised that YouTube is the future; there was no other way forward in terms of entertainment.” This is probably why many netizens would already know Venky through his online avatar: Step-Step Mani. “The character set the precedent for everything that followed.” After a couple of online videos, Step-Step Mani came alive in corporate and private shows, and now, is a standard act in many Enna da Rascala shows in the city. But Venky insists that he’s not a stand-up comedian. “No brains to write stand-up,” he grins, “You need a certain amount of dedication to sit down and write everything, which I don’t have.” His brand of comedy, he says, is improv. “I just have a skeleton to work with. 90 percent of the time, my act depends on the audience and how they respond.”
Step-Step Mani also paved the way for Venky’s foray into films. He was roped in by Selvaraghavan, who offered him a role in the 2013 film Irandaam Ulagam , and has also starred in Sutta Kadhai and Moone Moonu Varthai and has been appreciated for his performances. Yet, he says, “I think it's too early to say I'm going to focus on film. I'm still trying to figure out the medium.” Though he adds that he is kicked about his upcoming film where he breaks out of his comedian typecast by playing the role of a deaf and mute character, his focus, he says, is on Youtube.
This explains why, for his latest project with DRA builders, he dons the role of a new fictional character: Square feet Subbu. As Subbu, he promises “real-estate tips, straight from my lips” laced with his brand of quirky humour. The online show, called ‘Open Secrets’, has had 68,000 hits so far. “Usually, videos about a subject like real-estate might receive about 10,000 hits. I didn’t expect it to do as well as it has.” People, he explains, are interested not just because the information is relevant for a home-buyer, but also because it is presented in an inventive manner. “This is where advertising is heading in the online space; you tell an entertaining story and place the brand in it. We’ve been wondering how we can crack this space for a long time.”
Yet, like any performer, Venky’s heart lies in live entertainment. “But you can’t deny that unless you have an online presence, you can’t get new people acquainted with your act.” Which is why he says that whatever he does on stage, he does online as well. So stay tuned to Step-Step Mani, to see what the actor has up his sleeve next.
