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