Making people laugh is a serious business

I’m going to get married soon,” said upcoming stand-up comedian Sameer A Rahman. The evidently excited Rahman who was already three to four minutes into his stand-up routine at Breakthrough cracked his punch line, which had the audiences in fits of laughter.

“We got engaged recently. I’ve never met before… Ok, I’m joking. I’ve met her… once… under parental supervision,” said Rahman.

About a week ago (September 19), Rahman gave a stellar performance during the seventh edition of Breakthrough, the UAE’s only mixed media performance arts platform, where he had the audience in fits of laughter over his jokes about ‘arranged marriages’ and ‘Starbucks coffee’.

The beauty about Rahman’s performance is that it is purely homegrown talent. Rahman belongs to what can be called a legion of upcoming extremely talented stand-up comedians who’ve made it their life’s work to promote, nurture, support, and engage a new professional league of stand-up comedians born and raised in Dubai.

Khaleej Times caught up with the men behind ‘Dubai Laughing’. About two years ago, funny men and co-founders of ‘Capper Worldwide’ Salman Qureshi and Ray Addison realised that there is a huge potential for good quality comedy in Dubai.

Capper Worldwide, a recently formed organisation, is the startup which organises events such as the Comedy World Cup, Open Mic, Dubai Comedy Workshops, and paid for final event called Dubai Laughing. These events take place over different venues across Dubai, more commonly Rock Bottom Café, Bur Dubai, Players Lounge, Bur Dubai, and Courtyard Playhouse, Al Qouz.

The trio, better known as Dubai Laughing, comes up with some good quality professional comedy routines. “Very often we’ve had so many people tell us saying that they had no idea there was such good quality performers here in Dubai and I think a whole lot of credit goes to the fact that we’ve really pushed talented comedians to come up on stage. Very few of the performers today are who you can call amateur,” said Qureshi.

“It has come from a time where a monthly comedy event was a big thing. Now there is so much interest for stand-up comedy that events are becoming a weekly routine.”

The tremendously popular Comedy Workshops has, according to some of its attendees, has transformed them from borderline amusing into talented, confident speakers.

“I’ve always been a huge fan of comedy and I started off in London. I used to attend all comedy shows in London and I even went to watch the rubbish people because I admired that they were brave enough to get on stage, because I never thought I’d be brave enough to do it,” said Addison. After spending a few years helping people do the backstage work to set up Comedy Nights in London, Addison’s entry into comedy came after his attempt to MC, an event where the presenter was, according to Addison, embarrassing themselves and everyone else at the venue.

“I cut the MC’s mike that day and spoke in her stead to avoid any embarrassment to her. But everyone laughed at my jokes that night, after which I decided to come out here to Dubai three years ago and I saw that there is an opportunity here to do something different,” said Adisson.

The British national eventually bumped into Pakistani national Qureshi, who has been performing for a while. “I’ve been doing this for five years now and the first time I got up on stage was an open night in Connecticut, USA. It was after that performance that made me realise that stand-up requires a certain sort of format for success,” said Qureshi.

Qureshi, who gave up a corporate job to pursue comedy full time, was recently nominated for the Ahlan People’s Choice Award, 2014.

“One of the reasons this has been popular among Dubai residents is that the jokes are something they can connect with. Unlike international performers, people here can relate much easily to local comedians.”

After the hugely popular Gong Nights, the funny men decided to start getting more involved and start performing. “I suggested that we must start organising and start turning this thing into a proper circuit,” said Adisson.

Gong Nights were a phenomenon where comedians performed for three minutes and were booed off or further encouraged on stage, based on their performance.

“Dubai has been very receptive to stand-up comedy which has been beneficial for us because you learn comedy by performing. What is beautiful about the people here is that they encourage the best performer and steer clear of ethnic preferences,” said Qureshi. And today, after all the hard work, Dubai Laughing is slowly becoming a network of active, performing stand-up comedians across the Middle East. “In Dubai, we have about 40-50 active comedians and all put together, we have about 120-130 comedians across the Middle East,” said Adisson.

The workshop which takes place every Saturday in Al Barsha streamlines the process of comedy for the performers. Rahman, who started out as a student of the workshop, said that attendees will be amazed at what they can achieve at the end of the workshop.

More details about the workshop can be found on www.dubaicomedyworkshops.com and gig details of comedians can be found on the Dubai Laughing Facebook page (www.facebook.com/dubailaughing).

dhanusha@khaleejtimes.com