Ladies Special: Young, fresh voices find a stage at all-women standup nights

MUMBAI: Women, please fart,“ she urged into the mike, going on to quote a suspicious medical survey which prescribes that a healthy being must let one rip “at least 14 times a day“. “Come on, you can manage at least seven,“ prodded Neha, dedicating her precious four minutes onstage to making women as unapologetic about this bodily function as she feels men are.Though the room was too intimate and the seats far too close for the Monday night audience to heed the plea, their release, so to say, came in the form of catharsis as they watched12 self-aware wannabe standup comics milk their insecurities for laughs at a recent all-women open-mic night in Bandra.
Here, the line-up subverted the male domain of standup not only with their sheer strength but also original insights into the relation between small breasts and Maruti 800s, the side-effects of revenge Yoga, the internal conflict of a feminist during a misogynistic song at a nightclub, the similarity between India's Miss Malini and Australian Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and, in an unscripted moment, the mystery of the giant fake orange masquerading as street art in Nagpur. In fact, one of them ascended the stage in a hoodie to play a sexist whose name was “male comic“ and another asked the men in the audience about the function of sanitary pads. For the audience, the aggregate vibe of the evening felt somewhere between gatecrashing a hen party and listening to the many happy rants of a single hormone.
“You know why we have a ladies' standup night, right?“ asked the evening's host, well-known comedian Sumukhi Suresh. “Because it is marketable.“ While the concept of an all-women standup night itself is around five years old in the city--the first one began at the cutural hub The Hive--it has gained momentum recently with at least three venues hosting these “marketable“ nights that onlychurn out a better weekday turnout than a regular open-mic event but also throw up fresh voices that could ably walk the inroad into standup that was paved by the first generation of comics such as Aditi Mittal, Radhika Vaz and Neeti Palta.
“There's pressure to find the next woman with a fresh perspective on comedy,“ says Dhruv Shetty, head of artist management at OML, who combed these open-mics for a new reality show and left impressed with both the co-ed audience turnout and the variety of voices. Among the wannabe comics are writers, actors, consultants, marketers, engineers, teens and adults. So, typically, subjects could oscillate from the serious (the death of a close friend) to the frivolous (Chetan Bhagat's idea of a feminist) and sometimes the obscure (“I'm not a feminist. I'm not a meninist either. I'm just an improvperson,“ went one comic who ascended the stage wearing sunglasses.) For the women who've performed at both general open-mics and all-women ones, the latter feels like a warmer room. Here, “bombing“-standup speak for death by silence--not only stings less but also is cashed in (One comic says she has bombed so many times she is contemplating the nickname `Joke jihadi'). “It's not really a secret that we feel more comfortable around women and that being the only girl on an all male lineup can sometimes be alienating especially if you're new,“ says 21-year-old Urooj Ashfaq, who also finds the estrogen-filled green room to be free of judgment. “Seeing other women who are doing the exact same thing as you helps build your confidence and trade your experiences in the field,“ says Ashfaq, who started performing on the insistence of her friend, stand-up comic Sumaira Shaikh, and loves to “hate on“ things like fashion blogging and flair bartending in her routines.That most of her “female-perspective“ jokes land better on these nights, also doesn't hurt.
Not too long ago, Aditi Mittal had famously called Indian standup a “boys' club“. And while many feel such open-mics are a great way to encourage women to attempt comedy--25-year-old comic Kaavya Bector has run into many who find it unfair to give women “this extra platform“. She pegs this criticism down to the age-old 'equity vs equality' debate. “Equality would mean equal opportunity for all regardless of gender whereas equity would stand for equality of outcomes. It factors in aspects of the system that have made women less likely to go up on stage and try comedy in the first place,“ says Bector, who believes women tend to be more afraid of trying comedy for size than men and so, the nudge is welcome.
Though these open-mic gigs don't pay “except for maybe a free meal“, they serve as mini launchpads. Sudeip Nair of The Hive and The Cuckoo Club has seen comics like Bector and Pavitra Shetty go on to land writing jobs and work with established comics. Nair finds it particularly interesting to watch men and women react to sexual content. While Bector-who expands the G-spot her Gossipping spot--loves the deferred laughter that follows such jokes, Ashfaq recalls a woman coming up to her to ask why she made fun of paedophilia. “I wasn't punching down on the victim,“ says Ashfaq. Recently, she performed at a baby shower where the host asked her to avoid cuss words. When Ashfaq dropped one F-bomb though, it was politely ignored, as one would a woman's fart.