Stand-up Comedy Show: An Experience

It is very likely that all of us may have seen one or the other comedy show on tv or internet. Till a month back, I too had seen it only on web. It was only a few weeks back, when Ashish Solanki came to Jodhpur, did I see a comedy show live. And what a wholesome experience was that!

Ashish Solanki is the winner of Comicstaan Season 3, a competition between stand-up comics, featured on Amazon Prime. He is just the type of comedian whom I like best. Clean comedy, laughable jokes, relatable jokes, too. And he has that personality of a very descent boy. No wonder his show was called “The Good Boy”. It was in his show that I realised how different is the experience of watching a comedy show live than on TV. In a closed atmosphere, with live performance, your entire focus is on the jokes. The 10s of other people laughing with you lifts the atmosphere to a new level. And the efforts of the comedian are fully recognised by the audience. It was a laughter riot of 1.5 hours. My jaws were paining from all the laugh by the end of the show. The jokes landed so well, his caricatures of characters in his jokes was top notch, and there was a sense of responsibility towards the audience in his jokes. Clearly one of the best 1.5 hours I have spent on a show or activity of any kind.

With that in mind, we went to see another comedy show yesterday evening at a different club. This time the comic was Abhishek Walia. Unlike Solanki, I had no clue about what Walia’s personality is like, what is his niche, as well as what is the pattern of the show he is going to host. The audience here was less and comprised primarily of students in first year of their graduation, or who had just completed their school. This all I got to know, because the pattern of the show was roasting the audience to crack jokes. I don’t mind roasting, but only if it is relatable and a little mature or intelligent. But since the audience here was mostly in college only, the jokes just didn’t land for me. Another thing about the show that I didn’t appreciate was that it solely relied on roasting of audience. There was no effort from the comic’s side, no writing of jokes, no backend preparation. So I laughed or tried to laugh, only so that the comedian doesn’t get discouraged, as this is his job and today might have been just a bad day.

Having said all this, I would still highly recommend everyone to attend comedy shows atleast once. Do some background study of the comic and what type of show he is going to host, but if the jokes land for you, it is certain that you will find yourself all cracked up, which is such a great thing.