BREAD Revue, a newish Canberra comedy team of around 30 local actors, graphic designers, filmographers, musicians and producers is back again this weekend at Belco arts for the second year, bringing original comedy aimed at the world of 20-pluses.

Founded last year by Rohan Pillutla and Synan Chohan after Chohan announced to his astonished friends that he’d like to do a revue “all about bread”.

The resulting troupe Bread Revue kicked off with the debut show, “Mind the Crust”, hitting the spot with jokes about Shakespeare (“VB or not VB”), racism, global politics and beer.

This year Cholan has been joined by a co-director, Alana Grimley, and it’s been a nightmare trying to keep all the jokes hidden from their friends and potential audience members, although Pillutla will reveal that there is a satirical look at the effects of lactose intolerance at a global level and a spoof on Billie Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever” related to Canberra as the hayfever capital.

Describing what they do as “grassroots comedy for a good cause”, Pillutla as producer says he and Chohan both wanted to create a grassroots arts experience for other young artists to distract everyone from “the crushing banality of everyday existence” with sketches and big showbiz-style numbers.

Both had been involved in an ANU campus production of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” in 2019, but neither was a theatre student, Pillutla studying international security, and Chohan international relations and history.

They saw that’s there was theatre in high schools and universities, but few opportunities to actually get into it. Both coming from an sub-continental Indian background, they saw comedy as a way-in, a chance for a bit more diversity than we normally see in the theatre.

Pillutla believes that comedy can be more accessible to people of diverse backgrounds than serious drama colour, especially for those who haven’t had theatre experience.

He also believes that humour is pretty well universal. Last year, for instance, one sketch that specifically related to jokes about people from the subcontinent, but he reports that people liked it even if they didn’t understand it all.

That led me to YouTube and I can attest that most would have got the joke in the sketch where a white Australian girl tries to show cultural understanding by asking her Indian boyfriends if they’ve seen the film “Lion”.

Right from the outset, Bread Revue has been committed to assisting Mohammed Ali’s charity HelpingACT, which delivers food and supplies to Canberrans who need it, including refugees, international students and homeless people. Last year they raised $900 – they hope to outdo themselves this year .

“Mother Doughs Best: A Sketch Comedy Show”, Belconnen Arts Centre, September 23.