Stand Up comedy

[Music]

my name is ayushresta

i’m a stand-up comedian i’ve been doing

stand-up comedy for

attention

that’s true we all want attention

it is one of our basic human desires

and it starts as soon as we are born we

cry and scream to our mother

almost like saying hey give me attention

don’t let me die

and a stand-up comedian is just a person

who forgot to grow up

and since we cannot cry to our mothers

not anymore

we go up on stage every night in front

of random strangers

and we use humor to basically say the

same thing hey give me attention

don’t let me die

now it has become almost a cliche to say

that

uh comedians have issues all right think

of

the depressed clown of grimaldi

and all the famous comedians who seem to

have mental health issues

they seem to have drug abuse problems uh

trouble childhood trouble life in

general and that’s true

most of the comedians come from a rather

dark background

except for me i do this out of sheer

talent

um

when i started comedy it was almost a

way for me to not get bored after work

uh i grew up uh listening to guys atra

cassette tapes from

people like modern krishna haribangsa

jitu nepal manos gazurel and the likes

of those people

matter of fact my first comedy act that

i performed was in eighth grade

i prepared for a guy’s other i prepared

a five minute act

i went to the teaser and i said i want

to perform this and the five minute was

basically an

imitation of what i heard in the

cassette tapes all right

i was doing my best impression of a

comedian who was doing an

impression of another politician i had a

silly lines in a dhori song

i had a section of parody news and that

was it

and i don’t even remember what i said at

that time but what i do remember

is the attention for a month i was a

star

but only in my head because other people

forgot it after three days

but i was very happy and

these people that i saw like uh modern

krishna haribangsa

manos gazurel the comedy act they did on

tv and radio entities these people

looked larger than life i never thought

i could be one of those people

until i was introduced to stand-up

comedy

which is also done in large venues in

front of thousands of people but it’s

also done in front of a small stage

in front of 20 people this seemed doable

me and i had a friend who was as

fascinated in stand-up comedy as i was

and we used to always say yeah actually

the stand-up got no person

we have to try to at least once and just

to be able to say that we did it

nothing more than that we found out

about an

open mic that happened nearby and we

said yeah we have to do this

and for a week we we

wrote out jokes we practiced we gave

each other feedback

we practiced practice and the day came

we went to the open mic

and we didn’t do it we got scared right

because there were people and they were

reciting poems about oppression

uh inequality and stuff like that i had

a solid five minutes about masturbation

so we didn’t do it but we promised each

other that

next week we will do it no matter what

next week we went

again and we did it it wasn’t great

for 15 minutes maybe i got six laughs

but for 15 minutes got their attention

and that was enough for me

and it was enough for me to do it again

and again at

the open mic there were three people

doing comedy the two of us

and one guy who worked at the cafe uh i

had a dutch friend

he was from netherlands and i he was

quite funny so i told him and

went to him and said you’re quite funny

you should try the open mic

so he came and started doing it too so

there are four of us

and a few weeks later the

girlfriend of the dutch guy told us you

the four of us can do a show

i can convince bars and restaurants to

pay you for this and i was like

bars and restaurants will pay money for

my masturbation jokes

great let’s do it and that’s

how we did our first stand-up comedy

tour in 2017.

so if you are wondering what it takes to

start a comedy scene in a place like

nepal

the answer is a white girl

in these three years comedy i have seen

comedy grow from

virtually nothing to become some sort of

a phenomena and i feel very lucky to

have been a part of all this

but today i wanted to talk a little bit

about what comedians do

and what it what and the effect it has

on people and society

now defining expl defining comedy is a

very counterproductive thing

there’s a there’s a uh joke that says

explaining comedy is like dissecting a

frog

you know more about the frog but the

frog dies

and so let’s try killing the frog anyway

the primary a comedian has one job

and it’s to make people laugh for the

sake of entertainment

and that’s it we go up on stage we say

silly things

we do silly stuff we try to grab your

attention

we try very hard not to lose your

attention a comedian’s whole day

revolves around thinking

what would make people laugh and where

can i get free food

that’s it and

you see laughter comes from relief

the world is full of dangers problems

miseries

flaws paradoxes things that don’t make

sense

things that defy our set of beliefs a

comedian

takes these flaws points out these flaws

in a way that for a moment it seems

manageable

for a moment it seems small we take we

take problems of the world and we boil

down it to

its most basic form and ridicule them

and that gives people relief

hey i’m not the only one with these

problems

we take we take potentially dangerous

situations

like talking about politics religion

violence oppression and even sex and

we point out the flaws in them

we take away the power from that and

that’s how people

find relief in it people say people feel

safe talking about these things and

that’s when they laugh

like falling off of a bridge is scary

but put on a bungee cord and you will

laugh all the way down and up

the biggest laughters we hear is in

roller coaster rides in amusement parks

these are potentially dangerous

situations but

the element of harm is taken away and

people find relief in that

watching a comedy show gives the exact

same feeling

we talk about our general fears our

general anxieties

our general insecurities but in a safe

way

we take the power off of these things

and people laugh

now to say that comedians uh provide a

service

to to the society is like saying trees

are environmental activists

i mean we do this for a living we need

the attention we need the laughter we

need the validation

so that we don’t kill ourselves

social responsibility for comedians is

unfair

and an unnecessary burden we are just

entertainers

but having said that comedians don’t

intend to change the society

but the effect that comedy has

on society and carving thoughts on

people is undeniable

george george carlin probably made more

people atheist than

science ever did manos gazrael played a

bigger role in

painting the ex-king as just a civilian

more than any political parties but why

does this happen

there are two reasons the first reason

is that

comedy is an excellent tool to spread

messages

ideas and ideologies people are more

receptive to them

if they are said it in a funny way with

humor

we remember all the funny advertisements

like there is there is a quote that says

if you want to tell people the truth

better make them laugh first

otherwise they will shoot you

the second reason is that comedy by

definition

lives in the boundaries uh

comedy is an extreme mirror of the

society

what people laugh at is an excellent

uh indicator of of where the society is

at right now

comedians like to dance on the social

boundaries

and see how far we can push them because

people will not laugh at anything less

than that

and so in order to fulfill our

selfish need for validation and

attention

we push the limit of what’s acceptable

in the society

and uh and as a result the society moves

forward

now uh no matter what the effect of

comedy is in the society the fact

remains

that we are only entertainers uh we

do not intend to make any kind of

changes uh we are

jokers we are jesters um

all what whatever we do on stage is

nothing more than

a desperate attempts to be likable we

want to be hero for five minutes and

that’s

it and we hope that people don’t figure

out

what we are actually screaming in the

mic which is

hey give me attention don’t let me die

thank you so much