Kill the Guru

Kill the Guru: A Noir Yoga Comedy, by Martin McDougall and Edward Clark. Coco Yoga & Tripsichore; tripsichore.com

If you like your humor black, straight up, with no sugar (think Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Heller, Terry Southern, and the

late, great Kurt Vonnegut), then you’ll surely dig this biting 90-minute satirical audio drama about the selling and

buying of yoga in the United States. The phrase “kill the guru” might recall the old Buddhist admonition to

figuratively “kill the Buddha,” which is interpreted as doing away with all the obstructive projections of

the mind. But in this noir comedy, “kill the guru” means literally just that.

Featuring the voices of yoga teachers and actors Martin McDougall and Edward Clark (both of Tripsichore Yoga Theatre

fame), along with an uncredited cast of seemingly thousands, the story follows the convoluted adventures of a sleazy

accountant on the lam from a three-eyed mobster, who gets mixed up with a female yoga teacher. She’s trying to off her

guru, take over his considerable assets, and then play off his sainted memory to take over the world. Along the way,

the accountant (who’s by no stretch of the imagination a spiritual type at the start of the tale) becomes a

much-sought-after guru named Swami Excelananda. He builds a vast yoga empire, and then…well, we won’t spoil the

ending for you.

The writing is exceptionally sharp and funny: The constant barrage of one-liners and little asides spice up the

proceedings, and the actors do a terrific job. McDougall and Clark have definitely put the “ha” back in

hatha. And as in all good satires (think Jonathan Swift), the dark humor fronts a serious message that urges you to

look more closely at who you are and what you believe.