At 8 p.m. on a Sunday evening, people steadily trickled into Bay 146 at The Savera Hotel. The stage was set, but the performers were still skittish — the show, Laughter Choke, featured 12 comics from Chennai’s open mic circuit, some of whom were performing a public show for a paying audience for the first time. The pressure, undoubtedly, was nerve-wracking.
First on stage was Manoj Prabhakar, who announced his agenda clearly: “I’m going to tell some jokes. Please laugh when applicable — usually it’s whenever I give a pause.” The audience, largely friends of performers, were kind enough to comply, and so the comics tried their hand at a spectrum of subjects. While Aaquib Jaleel gave self-deprecating humour a go, Vishnu R. Krishnan took a moment to thank his parents for all the comic material they’d given him, and the six-foot-four-inch-tall Manikandan Saravanan revealed that he was scared of heights.
The show was organised by Chennai Comedy, which puts together at least two open mic evenings every month. These evenings have become popular over the last year, with many cafes willing to host them, and many participants ready to try their hand at comedy. Vikram Balaji, the host for the evening, said, “I started out with open mics in June 2014, and it taught me crowd work and gave me confidence. Now, I’ve performed close to 50 shows, including some in Indonesia, Australia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand.”
Most established comics swear by the importance of open mic evenings as it gives them a platform to test new content and subsequently fine-tune it. For new players, it gives them a taste of the spotlight, helps them network with city comics, and if they show promise, also find a public show. Given that the comedy circuit in Chennai is close-knit, it isn’t rare to see well-known entertainers such as Karthik Kumar of Evam or Mathivanan Rajendran of Stray Factory pop in at such events to scout for new talent.
At this public show, while not all the comics came out with flying colours, some of them really made sure they were noticed. Suman Kumar, for example, delivered jokes about parenthood with panache, and Gaurav Khemka navigated his jokes — ranging from Valentine’s Day to Rahul Gandhi to being a Marwari — with ease. While Aravind Radhakrishnan’s straight-faced humour won him applause, Navin Kumar, who called himself an oxymoron because he’s a Tamilian who knows Hindi, created ripples of laughter. With the stand-up comedy movement booming across the country, this city, too, is doing its bit to make sure there are spaces for mushrooming talent to find their footing. And with many class clowns coming forward to take the mic, it might not be long before we see a new wave of comics.
