On Saturday evening, Shilpakala Vedika was packed with thousands of excited fans. After all, the YouTube Fanfest came to town for the first time ever!
Hyderabad’s YouTube fanatics gave it a fitting welcome as their favourite stars took to stage. With some of the emerging local content creators coming together under one roof, and with a few surprise guests strewn in, the audience made the most of the time.
‘Viva’ Harsha and Mahathalli Jhanvi hosted the extravaganza that had a lot on offer. Amrita Nayak, Chai Bisket, VIVA, Mahathalli, Telugu One, Kantri Guyz, Kiraak Hyderabadiz, My Village Show, Girl For-mula, Shanmukh Jaswanth, Vijaya Tupurani, Warangal Diaries, Wirally and Melvin Louis were the performers.
Warangal Diaries and Kiraak Hyderabad, who kicked off the show, were the favourites, garnering never-ending cheers. Their content — pakka Hyderabadi — seemed to strike a chord with the “old city folks” as Vaibhav Chavan puts it. The enthusiast also whistled incessantly for his favou-rites. “I clicked pictures with some of the stars and tagged them online too! They responded,” he gushes.
The venue, a hot spot for audio launches, brought on an interesting idea to team Chai Bisket, who staged a spoof! The movie they were promoting was called Koru-kuthaa, and had clever puns. What’s more, they even roped in a surprise guest for the night, Vijay Deverakonda, who made the crowd go crazy. The actor didn’t accede to audiences’ request to mouth his famous dialogues, but said, “It’s not about just one movie or one dialogue. I should deliver a few more hits and that’s when I’ll be a star. Mark my words, one such movie is coming out in May.”
Next, team Viva put up a skit showcasing scenarios of what would happen if two businessmen or politicians met. Their show featured a meet between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, and Apple and MI phones!
Music and dance were brought onto stage by Zumba star Vijaya Tupurani and her crew, who collaborated with singing sensation Amrita Nayak. Dancer Melvin Louis, from Mumbai was a hit in this section with requests of ‘once more’ echoing constanly. Not known to many, some of his on-stage crew were actually his fans, who he had trained just two days ago.
Another wow moment was when a grandma, who often features in the videos of My Village Show, took to the stage in her pink sari with her camera. Her 1,000-watt smile and enthusiastic hand-waving warmed everyone’s hearts.
