SPOTLIGHT

“I HOPE AUDIENCES LAUGH”

Toronto-based Srutika Sabu is bringing her show1 Santosh Santosh 2 Go: Live at Grind-Con! to the 2026 Toronto Fringe Festival.

Toronto-based South Asian doctor-turned-clown, writer and multidisciplinary artiste Srutika Sabu is bringing her show1 Santosh Santosh 2 Go: Live at Grind-Con! to the 2026 Toronto Fringe Festival.

Blending clown, drag king performance, satire, physical comedy and absurdist storytelling, 1 Santosh Santosh 2 Go explores the pressure to constantly optimize, market and reinvent ourselves, while unpacking the world of LinkedIn influencers, Silicon Valley futurism and the hyper-masculine archetypes that continue to shape our feeds and cultural conversations.

It is a commentary on tech-bro culture, hustle culture and the increasingly performative nature of success and personal branding online.

The show also offers a layered perspective on how these ideas can intersect with South Asian identity, masculinity and cultural expectations around ambition, achievement and self-worth.

The production follows self-proclaimed tech visionary and podcast bro Santosh Santosh, also known as TOSH, as he publicly unravels during a live appearance at his favourite LinkedIn influencer conference.

Developed through Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s Emerging Creators Unit in 2025, the show examines the pressures of modern success culture and what happens when a carefully curated online persona begins to crack in public.

Hustle! Grind! Mindset! Standing at 5’9” with the ambition of 7’2,” Santosh Santosh is the host of the almost award-winning podcast Second-Hand Success, a proud second-hand Tesla owner and a relentless seeker of validation through LinkedIn thought leadership. Armed with 37 endorsements and one coveted heart reaction from a fan account of Sundar Pichai, Santosh is convinced he is on the brink of greatness until his carefully curated persona begins to crack in real time on stage.

Audiences can expect outrageous physical comedy montages set to Tamil music and Jpop, cringe-inducing motivational speaker energy, surreal ad breaks from a techno-feudalist future and surprisingly vulnerable moments beneath Santosh’s bravado.

At its core, the show follows a man confronting the realization that the idols he worships, including Elon Musk, may be false gods, and that his emotional attachment to his second-hand Tesla might not be the healthiest relationship in his life.

“Santosh is someone who has internalized model minority expectations and immigrant guilt so deeply that he’s transformed himself into this hyper-online podcast bro completely obsessed with hustle culture, self-optimization and the idea of success at all costs,” says Sabu. “On the surface, the show is absurd, chaotic and deeply comedic, filled with clowning, and ridiculous tech-bro jargon. But underneath it is someone desperately trying to feel worthy in a world constantly telling us we need to be more successful, productive and marketable versions of ourselves. I hope audiences laugh, cringe and maybe even recognize parts of themselves in Santosh’s need for validation and performance of success.”

Sabu has quickly emerged as a distinctive voice within Toronto’s theatre community. Following an existential pivot away from medicine, she immersed herself in Toronto’s performance scene, training in clown at Sweet Action Theatre and developing her drag king persona, Santosh Santosh, in acclaimed clown master Deanna Fleysher’s Drag King Comedy class.

The character first appeared in the hit 2024 Toronto Fringe production 1 Santosh Santosh 2 Go, directed by Ken Hall. Over the past year, Sabu participated in the Paprika Festival Creative Producers Unit, Theatre Gargantua’s Artist Roundtable and Nightwood Theatre’s Shadow Residency in Fundraising. She was also selected as one of nine finalists in the Firecracker Department and the 2026 Canadian Film Fest Comedy Ignitor program for her animated short film project.

Sabu is currently developing her first interdisciplinary musical and physical theatre work, My Beef with Beef, exploring casteism, migration and vegetarianism within the South Asian diaspora with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.

With its biting humour, chaotic energy and culturally resonant themes, 1 Santosh Santosh 2 Go: Live at Grind-Con! aims to be one of the standout theatrical experiences of the 2026 Toronto Fringe Festival, introducing audiences to an unforgettable comedic character while cementing Srutika Sabu as an exciting emerging voice in Canadian theatre.

When and where: From July 3 to July 12 at Sweet Action Theatre, Toronto.