Are local stand-up comedians getting their due?

Indore is hosting many stand-up performances these days, with local talent opening shows. But the local artistes feel that city audiences are not yet ready to pay to watch local talent alone
Indore is lately hosting a lot of comedy shows on weekends where stand-up artistes like Sapan Verma, Sahil Shah, Atul Khatri, Kanan Gill and Abhishek Upmanyu have become celebrated performers with their shows seeing a full house of live audiences.But what about the city’s local artistes? We take a closer look at whether they have an audience at home and whether bringing popular artistes to the city is benefiting them.

Organisers in the city are extremely supportive of promoting local artists. Vishesh Kasliwal, one of the core members of a city-based club that organised a stand-up comedy show earlier this month shares, “At our show which saw three top comedians performing to an audience of over 1,000, we also promoted two local artistes by letting them open the show on request. Their work was appreciated by the bigger artistes and spectators, but I doubt if the same number of people would turn up to watch a show of only local talent.” Devansh Singh, 20, a city-based comedy artist is of the opinion that Zakir Khan (who hails from Indore) has paved the way for the young aspiring artists in the city. He shares, “It is through him that I first got the chance to open for a big artiste and since then there has been no looking back as I have opened over 12 shows in Indore.”

Content is the biggest challenge
The local artistes feel that auditorium shows are their open mic as they have to have fresh content for every new show, since most of the time they are performing to the same audience. “As budding artists this make content the biggest challenge for us. I try to localise what’s going around globally to make the content relatable and new. One needs to be extremely prompt and imbue the jibes in sarcasm, be it dissing the politicos or narrating a scene of a super hero coming down to Indore (J),” says Parth Chaturvedi, a local artiste and film making student. Opening for big artistes has made local entertainers win great recognition in the city. Devansh Singh shares, “The best thing about opening for big artistes is that they consider our opinion on what kind of content would work for the local audience. We take pride in enlightening them that Indoreans are the best audience as they don’t get offended easily. We also get to absorb a lot from them, which helps us develop better content of our own.”


Everybody loves a good laugh. But people are willing to pay for a good laugh only depends on who the artiste is. Ragini Bafna, an enthusiast who has been attending many stand-up shows shares, “Though people enjoy the content that the local artistes deliver, they would prefer seeing the same content online for free than paying to watch a show.” Harman Singh, a media student and a local artist agrees, adding, “With the influence of YouTube, people in Indore want to watch stand-up, but don’t want to pay to watch local artistes.” For Arpal Jain, a YouTuber who posts funny videos online, social media has come in handy to get his work noticed. He says, “Social media is the best tool to promote and get your work worldwide recognition.”

Picture Credits: Arpit Joshi