Stand-up comedy has grown leaps and bounds

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The other day I stood addressing a conference at IIT Bombay. The topic was Social Media. The day had begun with a presentation by someone from Microsoft, then Yahoo, then Google and then...me.
What on earth was I doing at a conference of this nature?

And then it hit me like a bouncer hitting an Indian batsman – Theatre is a Social Media. Eureka! The summation of my talk was that theatre is one of the last physically shared entertainment experiences left.
And perhaps that oddity and uniqueness will ensure that it will always survive – not dependant on technology or electricity, just human beings.
With that heady realisation I relooked at the world and discovered to my dismay that I had misspoken. There is another form that exists in the “shared” space, and is as much an interaction as Theatre – Stand-up comedy.
Stand Up Comedy has grown leaps and bounds in India. Earlier anyone who was funny would get recruited to one of the half-a-dozen music (or should I say “youth”) television channels. Cyrus Broacha, Cyrus Sahukar, Ranvir Shorey and Vinay Pathak were all early benefiters of this outlet.
A few years ago an enterprising Vikrant Pawar gathered a few stage actors, wrote material and “tried out” stand-up comedy at numerous eating establishments across the city. While the evenings were enjoyable, they were perhaps pioneers ahead of their time.
Nowadays though, comedy is big business and popular. Many scoffed at The Comedy Store, as an exercise that wouldn’t work. Yet, in spite of the exorbitant ticket rates, most evenings there are full. Some comedians have taken the stand-up format and created proper performances. Vir Das has been very successful with both History of India Viritten and Walking on Broken Das. Cyrus Broacha’s Cyrusitis also enjoyed a long run in theatres.
Stand-up comedy is a new form that has almost imperceptibly crept into most other formats. Mimicry has always been popular, but actually standing up with loosely rehearsed material and improvising based on audience reactions is quite new.
Award hosts now open with a “topical” monologue, setting the tone for a fun evening. Recently I worked with an actor as an emcee for a corporate event.
For all the bits that seemed dull, he used a little audience interaction and immediately the whole evening came alive. The fourth wall is really fading.
A few nights ago I went to watch Nothing Like Lear, the third in a series of Rajit Kapur’s “clown” plays. Many appreciated the multi-cast Hamlet the Clown Prince, but Nothing Like Lear was a one-man show with Atul Kumar as a clown telling the story of King Lear to the audience. Except he didn’t, so in that way it was an apt title.
He did pick some powerful scenes and put them in an incoherent order. But most of the evening was spent interacting with the audience — picking on people in the first row, smiling at a girl on the side, asking the audience for suggestions and then admonishing them for it, etc.
Bit by bit Shakespeare was converted to stand-up on the hallowed Prithvi stage.
The Monologue has truly come a long way from the Soliloquy — no longer interior but much more exterior.
But no such trend is without its quid pro quo. So, just as stand-up comedy is moving into venues like Prithvi, plays that happen at Prithvi are also moving into The Comedy Store.
It’s been a relatively successful experiment over the last year, and now programming of plays is being stepped up.
In fact the long running The President is Coming is playing their first show on the 7th of March.
How a stage used to hosting one comedian with a microphone will cope with 10 riotous and rioting actors remains to be seen. Maybe this is the beginning of getting plays to influence stand-up routines.
Perhaps it’s time for a new form — The stand-up Tragedy… Oh wait, that’s already happening — to our cricket team in Australia.