FOMO · Reel One
A Chennai club night for people who actually leave the house. On Chennai’s first theatre rave, the film keeps running, the seats come out, and the room does what a room is supposed to do.
What this is
FOMO has been throwing rooms in Chennai for people who are tired of being sold a guestlist. This is the first time anyone has done it inside a working theatre.
The room
Single screen, raked seating, a projection box that has been threading film since before most of the room was born. We keep the seats. We hang a system where the front stalls were and point everything at a screen thirty feet wide. The film keeps running all night — nobody is watching it, and that is the point.
The sound
An auditorium is already an acoustically treated box — that is the entire reason one is shaped the way it is. Angled walls, no parallel surfaces, heavy drapes, a ceiling designed to kill slap-back, and no neighbours on the far side of it. What we bring in does not have to fight the room, so the back row can be comfortable while the front is not.
The house
Every seat is applied for and every application is read. Not to be difficult — because a house of 240 people who each decided to be there is a completely different night from a house of 240 people who bought a ticket because one was available.
Who is doing this
FOMO started because going out in Chennai had turned into buying a table and being sold a bottle. We wanted the other thing: a dark room, a loud system, and people who came for the music.
Every room we have run has been by application. It is slower, it is more work, and it is the only part of the format we will not change. A curated floor is not about keeping people out — it is about making sure that when the second act starts, everyone in the room is facing the same direction.
The cinema is the next step. It is the best-sounding room in the city that nobody has ever danced in, and the only reason for that is that nobody asked.
The programme
Programme subject to change · No re-entry after 23:30