Regional comedy is making its presence felt: Comedian Ashish Shakya

(life) Ashish Shakya feels that "protections for free speech and a sustainable live infrastructure in the form of regular venues that are crucial to stand-up comedy" are lacking in India when compared to the West.

Shakya spoke to life on the sidelines of the fourth edition of vdonxt Asia about the current scene of comedy in India and the recent changes the genre has seen in terms of popularity and more. Read excerpts:

How do you see the present scene of comedy in India?

Shakya: It is all sorts of exciting and dynamic and overall in the industry, there's definitely a sense of 'How big can we make this'. The novelty factor from ten years ago is gone so it's that much harder to break through the clutter but even so, in terms of reach and a sustainable audience base that will grow with each generation, I feel like we're just getting started. It's a little bit like driving - we're revving high in second and third gear, with occasional bursts of high speed magic and it's only going to gain more momentum.

How have you seen it growing?

Shakya: In terms of live, there's a very basic stats that a lot of comics will tell you which is that when we started doing this, the total number of comics in India could fit on one WhatsApp group (which was then limited to 50 members).

Now of course that number is in the several hundreds. So to go from that small scene, to the current behemoth that has grabbed the attention of everyone from audiences and brands to top platforms and has become part of mainstream discourse, is quite something. It's getting increasingly diverse, regional comedy is making its presence felt, top comics have upped the game and set the bar high, so yeah, these are exciting times.

What do you think has driven the change?

Shakya: I think people embraced it so fast and we got so many opportunities as artistes that would have taken us way longer to get abroad, because at the heart of it, it was just exciting for Ind to see people who looked like them, talk like them, and talked about things that affected them, with the style, substance and tight skill level that was imbibed from the West and something that a lot of us watched growing up. And then of course, came cheap data which massively opened up the audience base.

But do you still feel it lacks something when compared to the West?

Shakya: Yes, protections for free speech and a sustainable live infrastructure in the form of regular venues that are crucial to stand-up comedy. Our online base is huge but when it comes to people buying tickets, we've only tapped into a very small section.

Social media, OTT platforms has contributed to get comed the due respect. What do you think took so long for them to get the recognition?

Shakya: I actually think it's the opposite. We got recognition pretty quickly, simply because like I said before, we came in with something that audiences were super excited to see. And because of that, initial success happened at a rate much faster than what it would take someone in a saturated market like, say New York or London. It was a mix of timing, luck, talent, vision on part of companies like OML as well as brands that trusted us early on, along with of course the boom in mobile data consumption.

How is the Indian audience different?

Shakya: The live audiences that we play to are usually intelligent and open to various topics and are probably at par with most audiences abroad.

What are you upcoming projects?

Shakya: I'm working on a few fiction concepts and am looking to dive into that world pretty soon. After live, print, TV, YouTube, news comedy, radio and so much more, I feel that's the one thing I don't have under my belt yet, so that's gonna be my next obsession. And of course, writing and performing new stand-up material. That's a beast that needs regular feeding and I'm happy to do it.

(Puja Gupta can be contacted at puja.g@.in)

( With inputs from IANS )