By Jagdeesh Mann

Even animals have groupies.
Take for example cows, or monkeys, even the lowly rat: in places like India they have millions of ardent followers.
Chickens though never seem to get any love.
Man’s favourite dinner entree seems forever consigned to pecking its way across life, the barnyard, or worse, a galaxy of bad chicken jokes, alone.
In a classic underdog story, gallus domesticus has found a new ally, though from the most unlikely of sources.
A pair of local actors – who just happen to be also strolling across the proverbial road, from fringe obscurity to red carpet fame – have scooped up their bird of a common feather, and taken him under their wings.
The comic duo of Munish Sharma and Leena Manro are Bollywood Shenanigans, aka the ‘Butter Chicken Troupe’. The pair operates a sketch comedy collective that has been running ‘Off Broadway’ stage performances in Vancouver for the past year called “I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter Chicken”.
Imagine a mad geneticist impregnating a straight-to-DVD Bollywood movie with DNA spliced from Saturday Night Live and you get an idea of what kind of comedy vignettes the pair has hatched.
The sketches are laced with memorable caricatures: the over-sexed and under serviced ‘Auntie’, the yoga instructor from Hell’s Kitchen, and Surrey’s ‘Typical Brown Girl’.
For both Manro and Sharma, it has been a long road to Vancouver and their budding acting careers.
Manro, who hails from Calgary, worked for years as a litigator. Her compassion for chickens was born - understandably - from weathering thousands of bad lawyer jokes.
Sharma had an even further trek. His departure point began in Regina where one day he left his job of bouncing drunks and club DJ’ing, and started walking Westward, kind of like Forrest Gump.
Neither likely imagined they would be raising a chicken when they got here. But a mutual love of poultry has brought them together, and also generated a lot of positive buzz from the 1,000+ people who have come out to see their self-managed/ self-produced shows.
Joining Manro and Sharma for the upcoming 3rd installment of the Butter Chicken series: The Butter Strikes Back, is a group of local cast members: Jason Vaisvila, Kulveer Taggar, Kallol Mitra, Jessica Garcia, and Preet Cheema along with singing performances by Sabrina Saran.
Tickets are $10 and are available at Main Video or visit www.bollywoodshenanigans.com for info.

When: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 8:00pm
Where: 1622 Franklin Street, Vancouver
Tel: 604 649 7112
Email: bollywoodshenanigans@gmail.com