Funny business: Briton seeks Indians for Comedy Store

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(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-14 09:20

MUMBAI: In 1979, Don Ward opened a small club in London to provide a stage for the best of Britain's undiscovered comic talent. After 30 successful years, he now wants to do the same in India.

Ward is taking The Comedy Store out of Britain for the first time, opening a branch in India's cosmopolitan entertainment capital Mumbai to give audiences a taste of the best of international stand-up and to foster home-grown talent.

"There's a tremendous comedy scene in the United Kingdom, which has just 60 million people," Ward told AFP by telephone from his London home. "India has 1.2 billion people. It's easy to do the math."

In India, comedy in Hindi and other indigenous languages still tends to see comedians delivering pithy one-liners on television shows or theatre satires lampooning politicians and society's quirks.

Its English-language comedy scene is small in comparison, although Indian comics such as Vir Das and Papa CJ or Canadian Russell Peters, whose family is of Anglo-Indian origin, have attracted a loyal following.

Like Ward, Papa CJ and Peters believe India's stand-up scene can be developed and, as in business and technology or outsourcing, unleashed on the world.

"I strongly believe there is phenomenal potential for high quality stand-up comedy in India," Papa CJ told AFP by email. "There is a dearth of entertainment in India and The Comedy Store fills that gap very well."

Peters added: "In the (United) States and Canada there's a lot of Indian comics and quite a few of them are pretty good. I also know that there are a few local Indian comics in India, which is a good thing."

"There's no reason why they shouldn't be successful... I know there's a market for it," he said in an email.

The new Comedy Store, a 300-seat venue at central Mumbai's High Street Phoenix shopping and leisure complex, is due to open in early December. Ward and his Indian business partner Amar Agrawal have both invested $1.6 million to get the project off the ground. Preview gigs in the city in June, featuring comedians Sean Meo, Ian Stone and Paul Tonkinson, were well-received.

Ward, 67, said he is well aware of India's "sacred cows" - subjects that are still off limits in what is still a conservative society.

But he promises that the material - and even performers such as Paul Sinha, an openly gay British Bengali doctor or British-Iranian comedian Shappi Khorsandi - will push boundaries.

"Safe comedy is boring comedy," he said. "There has to be an element of risk. My mission is to make you guys feel uncomfortable and to make you think - and of course entertain you."

AFP