The first funda of success — forget the funda, enjoy the fun! The formula must work, otherwise Crazy Spotlight Productions, a theatre group made of students, would not still be around. There is no sign of the group for most of the year, but in summer when various freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors and graduates fly home to Delhi from their American colleges, with an itch to act, Crazy Spotlight kicks into action. And for the last three years, they’ve pulled a rare breed in to theatres — the hip Delhi college student who generally avoids plays.

This year, it is Fasten Your Seatbelts, a semi-musical adaptation of a French play called Boeing! Boeing! written 55 years ago by Marc Camoletti. If the story reminds you of Garam Masala, it is not Camoletti’s fault. Fasten Your Seatbelts is about high-flying Adit, who has been juggling his three flight attendant girlfriends much to his maid Parvati’s distress. Things get messy when flights are delayed, schedules changed and an old school friend Raj joins them. “Nothing cerebral. It’s our own age group we make plays for — 16 to 25-year-olds who otherwise go for movies, not theatre,” says Madhav Mehta, 19, from Pomona College, California, who has been with the troupe for three years.

There’s Bachna ae haseeno playing at top volume and actors gyrating to very filmy dance moves. Elsewhere, director and troupe leader Nikhil Mehta, 20, a theatre student from NYU, is turning jokes into edgy dialogue. “I watched the Broadway production of Boeing! Boeing! and thought of Indianising it. From January to April, I worked on the script and now it is a Delhi play, set in a DLF flat. The air hostesses are no longer German, French and American, they are south Indian, Mumbaikar and Punjabi,” he says.

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