Writing English Comedy for Indian Audiences

I am going to attend a Comedy Writing workshop at the India Habitat Centre, next weekend. The subject of the two day workshop is Writing English Comedy for Indian Audiences. The various areas that this workshop will cover are a) Film b) TV c) Plays and d) Stand-up, basically writing a funny script for these mediums.

The faculty will be a Gentleman by the name of ANUVAB PAL who is an acclaimed playwright, screenwriter, novelist and stand-up. He is the writer of the smash hit Mumbai plays - The President Is Coming, 1 888 Dial India, Chaos Theory and his latest that's packing houses, The Bureaucrat. His films include the cult classics The President Is Coming and Loins Of Punjab Presents.

Although the session is a week away, my mind seems to wonder what kind of people enrol for such workshops, is it

-          People with published works

-          People who treat it as a hobby

-          People who want to be in the Media/limelight

-          Explorers who just want to hear like-minded people

The second question that comes to my mind is that how can a script which is suited for television be adapted for film, or something which is a hit on stand up, can be made effective for a sitcom.

Humour is a relative term, what is humorous to some can be offensive to others, how to find your target audience, how to ensure that they remain your target audience throughout the script and do not change ship by the end of it.

How do freelance writers and bloggers who like doing things at their own leisure adapt to the timelines of writing for TV or Film and adjust to a persona of the TV stars and Film Stars.

I guess all these questions can be answered once I attend this workshop, and if they are not answered then hell what it’s only some cash that goes down the drain, anyways all of us are used to losing cash with the volatile stock markets.