Yes, And-ing My Way to Hong Kong!

Three years ago, if someone had told me that I would be performing improvised theater in Hong Kong, I would have laughed and gone back to whatever code was demanding my attention.

Then improv happened.

What started as a curiosity slowly became a community. Soon I was performing almost every weekend, spending evenings with people who could turn the smallest observation into a story. Somewhere along the way, Bala, one of the founders of ImprovLore and my mentor, mentioned that we could take the format - Reincarnations, to Hong Kong. There are opportunities in life that you carefully evaluate, and there are others that you say yes to before your brain has a chance to calculate the logistics. This was definitely the latter!

Reincarnations is inspired by Vikram and Betal, following a central story while jumping across timelines, locations, characters, and sometimes even abstract ideas. It is chaotic, ambitious, and exactly the sort of thing improvisers love. A handful of us immediately signed up. Then came the less glamorous part: rehearsals. Adulting and improv are natural enemies. Between meetings, deadlines and people travelling every other weekend, even finding three people in the same room felt like an improv exercise. Somehow, after enough reschedules and "Can we do Sunday instead?" messages, we finally managed enough rehearsals phew!

Passport, Panic and Pho

I built a project manager's fever dream - detailed spreadsheet for everything - flights, accommodation, contingency plans. Nobody used it. Not even me.

The organizers also asked us to record an introduction video for the festival. Naturally, we decided to include some local greetings. Samriddhi, in our troupe, being a Mandarin teacher, helped us practice which led to a few laughs at our attempts.

Finally, it was time to fly!

At the airport, Bala checked in without issue. Some of us found ourselves dealing with confusion around PAR forms and address details. While that was being sorted, Samriddhi almost lost her passport. For about ten minutes, panic spread through the group. Immigration nightmares were imagined. Flights were mentally missed. Entire alternate futures were constructed. Then we discovered that Jatin had been carrying her passport all along! For a group of people who claim to be excellent communicators, it was not our finest moment.

Thankfully, Hanoi layover was waiting which meant feasting on summer rolls, learning how Vietnamese coffee is prepared and forgetting about the earlier chaos.

A Guftagu with Hong Kong

My relationship with flying has never been particularly enthusiastic, but Hong Kong quickly distracted me from that. First of all, the flight literally looked like its going to be landing in the seas because the runway is surrounded by waters and it is not visible from a height. Even before we left the airport, the city felt different. We took the MTR into town and watched skyscrapers emerge between mountains and greenery. I had visited large cities before - Mumbai, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City, but Hong Kong felt like somebody had decided to build a futuristic metropolis without removing nature from the picture. Towers rose out of hillsides. Clouds drifted between buildings.

One of our first meals provided the perfect introduction to travel. A friend ordered tea in the local language. Somehow we received broccoli! Not tea with broccoli. Not tea and broccoli. Just broccoli. We never fully figured out what happened, but it became one of those stories that followed us for the rest of the trip...and we could never finish that broccolis haha.

That night, exploring Mong Kok's street food, we found ourselves at a Sichuan restaurant. My Mandarin-speaking friend struck up a conversation with a group of local women. Within minutes, she'd been pulled into their gossip while rest of us were having a lasting impression with Sichuan peppercorns.

Then it was finally time to head to the Fringe Club.

Yes And Hong Kong International Festival!

There is something special about arriving at a festival venue and immediately realizing that everyone around you speaks the same strange language. We registered, collected our lanyards and merchandise, decorated everything with stickers, took photographs, and started meeting improvisers from around the world. The atmosphere was equal parts excitement, curiosity, and barely controlled chaos.

The opening night featured performances by the teachers, and it immediately set the bar high. Bala and Matt attempted fifty scenes in twenty-five minutes, moving between characters and stories with incredible speed. Other performers explored relationship dynamics, sound-based formats, and audience-inspired narratives. Every show felt like a reminder of how many different forms improv can take.

The workshops were equally inspiring. One of my favorites was Helena's session on improvised K-Dramas. We explored dramatic character arcs, emotional escalation, editing techniques, and all the ingredients necessary for maximum melodrama. The most important lesson, however, was undoubtedly the proper execution of a kimchi slap. Apparently there's a correct technique for an imaginary sauce-covered kimchi slap to the face — and the resulting scenes were exactly as ridiculous as you'd expect.

The real joy of the festival, though, came from the people.

Lunch breaks became opportunities to make friends, exchange stories, and compare improv cultures from different countries. This eventually escalated into a prank war between our group and the Italian team. The objective was simple: trick members of the opposing team into looking through an O-shaped circle made with your fingers. The simplicity of the game made it even funnier. For five days we attempted to ambush one another in rooms, restaurants, workshops, and occasionally while people were trying to perform. Eventually, everybody got roped in!

The days settled into a rhythm. Workshops during the day. Shows in the evenings where performers weave together multiple narratives, transform audience stories into theatre, and create entire worlds out of nothing. We microwaved 7-Eleven sushi(-yans), drank too much questionable tea, ate too many pineapple buns, got turned away from nightclubs, lost hotel keys (found in a friend's bag), and had too many 4 a.m. pavement conversations over rice and curry. Nights ending in climbing back uphill because Hong Kong apparently believes that every destination should involve a staircase. By the end of the week, my calf muscles were jagged enough to cut glass!

Somewhere in between, I attended Matt's workshop on platforms and stage geography. It completely changed how I thought about using physical space in scenes and how it adds another dimension for the audience. Every teacher seemed to offer a different perspective on storytelling, listening, editing, and performance.

Then our performance day arrived.

We had decided to wear traditional Indian outfits. Backstage, the energy was impossible to ignore. There is a unique feeling that exists in the moments before a show begins. Excitement and fear somehow occupy the same space. I remember looking into my teammates' eyes and seeing the similar feelings being mirrored back. We'd rehearsed this format earliar, made mistakes, laughed at them, argued over edits, and wondered if we were over complicating everything. Now there were lights, an audience speaking a different language, and our names on an international festival schedule. For a moment I just stood there thinking, "How do I get myself into these situations?"

When we finally stepped onto the stage, all of that disappeared.

The audience gave our protagonist a problem that they are struggling to solve, and suddenly the story began unfolding. Over the next thirty minutes we traveled through research laboratories, AI chatbots, paper-making factories, musical sequences, amoeba families, ancestors offering guidance, and a surprisingly heartfelt romance. The story kept expanding and contracting in ways that somehow felt natural. Everyone remained committed, playful, and fearless.

Bala was phenomenal at steering the format while giving everyone room to contribute. We trusted one another enough to make bold edits and unexpected choices. By the end, the audience was actively rooting for two characters to end up together. Hearing people cheer for a relationship that had been invented less than half an hour earlier felt like the highest compliment possible.

When the show ended, we were buzzing. Dil gad gad ho gaya!

The kind of buzz where analysis becomes impossible because you're still running entirely on adrenaline. We walked through the streets of Hong Kong shouting, laughing, replaying favourite moments, and trying unsuccessfully to calm down. The emotional high lingered for hours.

Tying Up the Loose Ends

After the festival wrapped up, we spent a day at the beach with improvisers from around the world - barbecues, conversations in the water, and one particularly stressful episode involving my temporarily missing phone (thankfully recovered, involving a lot of stairs). Standing in the water surrounded by hills and greenery, I remember thinking it felt like being inside a level of Temple Run.

Naturally, we celebrated our performance with hotpot, ordering enough food to feed a small village: mushrooms, dumplings, vegetables, meats, noodles, condiments, and multiple soup bases. Bala somehow became the designated cook, patiently ensuring nobody accidentally poisoned themselves. Chattering away with the post-show conversations, I understood why hotpot is often described as the ultimate communal meal.

The next day we headed to Victoria Peak. The tram ride alone felt like an attraction, climbing at what seemed like an impossible angle. The view from the top was spectacular. We celebrated an upcoming birthday, took photos, admired the skyline, and somehow even ended up being asked for selfies by local visitors.

As troupe members slowly began departing, the rest of us shifted into a hostel and continued exploring. We tried out qipaos, wandered through markets, temples, islands, side streets, antique shops, and neighbourhoods far away from the festival bubble.

Looking back, what stays with me isn't any single attraction or performance. It's the people.

It's the friend who accidentally carried someone else's passport. Its the mysterious disappearance of festival tote bags. The Italian prank war. The local girl who gave me her shirt because I was cold. The friends who got my back when I felt unsafe on the streets. The late-night uphill walks. The backstage nerves. The shared food. The conversations that stretched long after midnight.

And Hong Kong became more than a trip. It became one of those rare experiences that reminds you how unexpectedly wonderful life can be.

One day you're sitting in Bangalore wondering what to do with your weekend. A few years later you're performing on an international stage with people you care about in a city halfway across the world.