CHENNAI: The world and its perception of artists often tells us that a jump from one experiment to another is what the life of an artiste is supposed to be. When Jonathan Larson, a young theatre composer was upset because his five years of work, Superbia, the musical, didn’t do well as per his expectations, his agent Rosa advises him that a writer should keep on writing and experimenting.
“You just keep throwing them against the wall, hoping against hope that eventually something sticks,” she says in Tick Tick Boom, a movie inspired by Jonathan’s life. Pratima Narang and Natasha Rastogi, two young stand-up comedians from the city follow the same drill — experiment and explore their creative horizons till they get satisfaction as an artiste. With their latest show, ‘Allowed Nahi’, the artistes are doing an act of 40 minutes each for the first time in Chennai. “This is an experimental show. From doing five-minute acts, to openings for other artists, we are doing a show of our own for the first time. We both are Hindi comics based in Chennai and have collaborated previously. My act will be 75% English and 25% Hindi and Natasha’s will be majorly in Hindi. We want to see how it goes,” shares Pratima.
Both Natasha and Pratima have been in the field for two years now. “In 2021, during the pandemic, I started putting up short videos on my Instagram profile. A friend of mine suggested I try something along the stand-up comedy lines. I started with doing comedy on Zoom and eventually moved to live stage shows in Delhi and Chennai,” shares Natasha, who is originally from Meerut. From experiences of being a woman hailing from a small city to struggles from her personal life, Natasha has been writing comedy to convey serious messages in a light and funny way. She says, “Comedy is a way of protesting against the stereotypes of society.” Pratima shares that her style of comedy is such that it is existential and caters to almost everyone. While doing shows in Hindi is difficult in Chennai if you don’t have the right audience, both the artistes comment that the city’s stand-up comedy scene has been very welcoming to them. “There are sometimes difficulties like translating the joke into English for the crowd. When you translate the joke, it might not be as funny as it was in the native language. But we have faced a lot of support,” says Natasha. She has done openings for many North Indian comics including Rohan Gujral and Shreeja Chaturvedi.
For Pratima, maintaining a full-time job as a chartered accountant and doing comedy is a task. But she juggles it and works on improving her skills as a self-taught artiste. She says, “Through books and shows of other performers, you will get to know more about the craft like how to maintain the audience’s energy, when to deliver certain jokes, what to do according to the responses and so on.” She adds that the senior comics from the city including Karthik Durai, Chockalingam, Navneet and Guna have been very helpful.
With each performance, there is an urge to experiment with something unique. With ‘Allowed Nahi’ they hope to present the audience with a good one and half hour of laughter. Pratima shares, “There are different types of comedy — observational, anecdotal, topical, the ones with well-written wordplay, current affairs with the undertone of humour. In this show, we wanted to give a mix of all types. There will be an act of 30 to 35 minutes and in the last five minutes, everything will be connected together, it is called callback. We conducted a tester of the show to receive feedback and the response was positive. We are waiting for the show.”
‘Allowed Nahi’ will be held at Offbeat Music Ventures on August 6 from 7 pm. Tickets are available on bookmyshow.