What is the golden standard for all comedy clubs apart from a lone spotlight and high stool against a brick wall? A healthy stream of talent that the city would not easily tire of. With Chennai witnessing a sudden boom of comedy clubs this month, is it safe to say that comedy is a reliable revenue model in the city and the stream of talent is constant? We may not know until a few more months later, but one thing is for sure; spaces specifically meant for comedy are gateways to honing local talent.MetroPlus takes a trip through the city’s only three such spaces.
CounterCulture Comedy Club
The city’s oldest comedy club — which is merely eight months old — screams everything intimate. Housed in an unassuming office building (APN) in Alwarpet, the space is “simple” in every sense of the word, and is meant to be so as Vishwaraj Mohan, CEO and founder of CounterCulture, a long-standing live entertainment business, puts it. A lone string of fairy lights hang on the wall opposite the brightly-lit, slightly elevated platform, as a few chairs are scattered around it. A partition divides the tiled-space, behind which are more seats, lest a bigger turnout is expected. Apart from the spot, basic lights are also involved.
Athina Meryl Keziah, marketing associate, says local comics attract a crowd from anywhere between 20 to 50 people on a show day. Once a comic keeps doing the same set over a period of time, understandably numbers go down. The space, Athina says, is also used by comics to sit around and test their content among peers. “It’s a very community-driven space in that sense,” adding that they try to keep the space as intimate as possible. “Besides the fact that venues are critical for artistes to grow, we were interested to see that comedy is selling tickets around the country. We took a strategic decision to place it in Chennai because we wanted to keep it more regional and we know that here, there are some comedians who are rising. We realised that the conservatism of Chennai is slowly opening up.” Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Guwahati and Shillong are in the pipeline while Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, Vishwa believes, are “oversaturated markets”.
Their internal formula is to keep the space 33% local, 33% national and 33% dedicated Tamil nights every Sunday. “We are also working on a deal with Sun TV to bring in music/comedy content,” says Vishwa. Over the months, he has observed that Hindi comedy does not have a space in the city — despite there being a significant percentage of migrant population.
SoCo (South of Comedy)
Circles of white fumes emanate from yesteryear’s Bamboo Bar in Hotel Savera. “Don’t go in, you could die,” Rabhinder Kannan chuckles, and follows it up with a quick, “I am kidding!” Thursday to Sunday every week, this quaint bar transforms into a snazzy comedy central — SoCo (South of Comedy) which also happens to be the newest entrant in the crop. Currently, the space, which has been created by Evam in collaboration with Savera Hotel, is being fogged and readied for the evening’s show — an open-mic for Tamil comedy. Participants have settled themselves in, though their show is a good two hours away: there is no place for nervousness here; only jokes. The boisterous crowd proves it. Rabhinder, head of operations at Evam Stand Up Tamasha (which has been operational for the last nine years), who is a stand up comic himself, speaks of the inception, “In these nine years, we have had the liberty of working with a team of 15 artistes, many shows on Amazon and artistes who travel the world with their content, but we were not able to crack the comedy club for a long time.”
Evam had been doing shows at Bay 146 for the past four years, and moving to, and creating a space entirely for comedy was done in collaboration with Hotel Savera’s support. “Then started a two-month-long reconstruction of the bar to make it more ‘comedy friendly’. We constructed a stage, set up the lights and created an amphitheatre feel,” says Rabhinder. The curved bar, which is functional at all other times, hosts a colourful logo: SoCo at BB, ridden with LED lights, which comes on every time a show begins. The small curved stage, has extendable ramps if the comic wishes to walk around and interact. Curtains at the midpoint close out the empty space beyond, making the setting more intimate for a scarce crowd; they are also sound-proof. “At least 60% of our programming is with local comedians. Considering that this is a space which celebrates comedy in all its formats, a good percentage is regional comedy — Telugu, Tamil and Hindi. At the same time, we are doing events like an edition of motta maadi music, based on comedy. They will be doing a 75-minute show, featuring all the funny songs in Tamil. The idea is to create a safe space for the genre,” he continues, adding that sessions with comedy writers and improv sessions will also be part of the programming.
The Spotted Hyena
Bright, pink lights, reflect off the tiny wooden cogs that occupy the backdrop with a logo that says, The Spotted Hyena. Second in-line to actualise, this comedy club was launched with a star-studded line-up of stand-up comedy, improv shows and headlining acts. Housed in Club Crest, at Phoenix MarketCity, the space is flexible as Bhargav Ramakrishnan aka Baggy of Half-boiled Inc puts it. More importantly, the backdrop strays from the usual brick-wall-and-spotlight format because it should be able to double up as a setting for other performances as well. If at one point, it is an intimate space, at another, it should evolve into a larger one which would accommodate a round-table setting. Which means, newer formats are what The Spotted Hyena is working on. Decidedly, their priority is on presenting a myriad structures that new and amateur talent can try out.
“To facilitate an environment where artistes can collaborate, create content and test it, having a space is vital. It also helps to create a culture of audience who would invest time in watching live shows and encourage new talent,” says Baggy. Though the space is likely to be a performance space rather than a comedy club, in the strict sense of the word, the importance will be on stand-up and alternative comedy. “We are planning to explore comedy in a debate format, late-night shows, sketch shows and a lot of improv sessions,” says Baggy, adding that they would have around 450 such sessions in the coming year. “Moreover, if an artiste ‘kills the show’, they would also get the opportunity to shoot a video of their act and put it up on our platforms,” he continues. According to the comic, regional comedy with respect to Chennai, would include both Tamil and Tanglish comedy; this would easily factor in 80 to 85% of the artistes in the city.
