Chennai is Joking Around
Syama Harini performs a stand-up set on the Prime Video show Comicstaan Semma Comedy Pa.
“There will be laughter every minute.” From Kalainavar to Improv, theatre to film, satire to stand-up, Padmaja Jayaraman reveals a brief history of comedy in Chennai.
When single people asked Alexander Babu if he liked his married life, the husband and father-of-two would have a ready reply. “The opening was fantastic,” Babu said. “The first half was very good. I could not sit during the second half—so many unnecessary fights. But overall, it is good. You can watch it one time.” The audience, at Babu’s 2017 comedy special, was now in stiches.
In 2019, he went on to deliver his first Amazon Prime Video stand-up special, Alex in Wonderland, a musical comedy show.
“I became a fan of Alex after watching his special,” said Lalitha Srinivasan, a 48-year-old Chennai resident. “He sang like a pro, and used music as a medium to tell jokes that even elderly and middle-aged people could understand.” Srinivasan said so in contrast to much of the contemporary stand-up comedy usually focusing on entertaining only the younger generations.
“Stand-up comedy is not a new concept in Chennai,” said Karthik Bhatt, a 35-year-old comedy theatre artiste based in Chennai. “Even before colonial times, speakers used to deliver mythological discourses with humour, and the audience used to crack up laughing. It was just that we didn't call them ‘stand-up comedies’.”
Comedy has always been a tool to address the elephant in the room of that particular era. Like how Ramaswamy’s plays mocked political systems, today’s comedy is confronting so-called tabooed topics, breaking stereotypical notions.
Comedy has been an inherent part of the performing arts in Chennai since the days of yore. It was theatre that transformed the role of comedy from a source of entertainment to a weapon of social reform. Bhatt talked about how comedy theatre evolved from the 20th century in the city. In its primitive stages, he said, comedy was interspersed between two acts in a play. When the artistes used to take a break for changing costumes or make-up, two people would fill this interval with a buffoon act, until the main play resumed. Comedy in this time solely served the purpose of entertainment. In the 1940s, more plays with comedy as the major genre cropped up, thanks to Nagercoil Sudalaimuthu Krishnan—also known as Kalaivanar or NSK—a Tamil actor and comedian who introduced slapstick comedy to India, earning him the title of ‘Charlie Chaplin of India’.
Politics became a hot theme for comedy theatre after independence, and comedy increasingly took on the role of initiating social reform. Cho Ramaswamy was a playwright who developed ‘political satire’ as a distinct genre. One of his most popular plays, Muhammad bin Tughluq was a satirical take on political affairs. It premiered in 1968 in Chennai. The play was so famous that it was made into a movie, with Ramaswamy starring as the protagonist. Today, the original audio drama is available on YouTube rendering it to be timeless.
Muhammad bin Tughluq begins with Thaathachaari talking about king Tughluq, who ruled Delhi in the 14th century. Thaathachaari tells Narasimhachaari how Tughluq did not care about his kingdom and people, and how his policies always backfired. To this, Narasimhachaari asks,
“Why do we need to talk about Tughluq now? Let us talk about how the current central government is functioning in Delhi.”
“There is no difference between talking about Tughluq and the central government. It is the same thing,” replies Thaathaachaari.
The '80s dawned the era of the drawing-room comedy genre with playwrights like Mohan Rangachari, famously known as Crazy Mohan and SV Sekar making plays on day-to-day family affairs. “Comedy content draws a lot from society, be it in the past or the present," remarked Bhatt. The play, Chocolate Krishna, which is the brainchild of Crazy Mohan has been enacted 1,024 times as of 2020, since its inception in 2008, according to a The Hindu report.
“I am Neelaganda Shaastri, world-famous astrologer,” says an old man.
“Who said?,” asks Maadhu, a salesman.
“My wife said it! I have mastered eight doctrines—numerology, astrology, namology, palmology, gemmology, vastulogy... I am missing two more -gys.”
“I will tell. They are Rajaji and Gandhiji,” completes Maadhu.
As this scene of Chocolate Krishna unfolds, people guffaw as they are tickled with back-to-back jokes on stage.
“In the ‘60s, dramas, like that of Tamil director K Balachander's, used to have meaningful comedy that used to travel alongside the storyline, like in the plays of Edhirneechal, Navagraham and Server Sundaram,” explained V Balasubramanian, a 63-year-old connoisseur of theatre. “There wasn’t a garland of jokes back then. Comedy used to be interspersed with a serious plot. But in the ‘80s, we can see the storyline taking a backseat with comedy being in the forefront. There will be laughter every minute. You could not turn your head on either side, or you will miss the jokes. Crazy Mohan and SV Sekar were veterans of this style.”
The advent of television and cinema challenged theatre as an entertainment form, Balasubramanian added. “Many troupes went out of profit except for a few. Theatre artistes are spending money out of their own pockets to put up a show, for the sake of passion and self-satisfaction currently. People are not ready to pay and watch stage drama.”
But not all artistes are downbeat. “When cinema was introduced, people thought theatre would go away; and when television came up, they thought cinema would say goodbye,” conveyed Bhatt. “But none of these happened. Things will coexist. I don’t see how technology is a threat to Tamil Theatre, I see it as an opportunity. There are challenges definitely. People have more access to a lot of content than ever before, that too in convenient timings. You have to up your game [as a theatre artiste].”
With globalisation and the dawn of the internet, stand-up as a unique entertainment form perked up in Chennai in the 21st century. “Stand-up comedy became popular in 2015,” Syama Harini, a stand-up comedian who participated in Comicstaan Semma Comedy Pa (Tamil), an Amazon Prime Videos reality show. “The number of people being exposed to it increased. Thus, comedy clubs cropped up in the city.” Harini is also a theatre artiste who has acted in many plays since her school days. “Theatre helped me with stand-up by taking away my stage fear,” she said.
Comedy has always been a tool to address the elephant in the room of that particular era. Like how Ramaswamy’s plays mocked political systems, today’s comedy is confronting so-called tabooed topics, breaking stereotypical notions. “Earlier there were not many jokes on women's issues, anxiety or mental health,” said Harini. “Now we have jokes on all of these issues apart from the regular engineering and political jokes.”
Members of Half-Boiled Improv. Photo: Srinivasan Ramesh
Be it stand-up comedy, or theatre, there is usually a script involved. Breaking from that norm, a new branch of unscripted, spontaneous comedy emerged in 2017 in Chennai called the Improvisational Comedy (or Improv). Bhargav Ramakrishnan—also called Baggy—a stand-up comedian along with a group of like-minded people introduced an improv club called Half-Boiled Improv.
“[Improv comedy] is a unique and interesting aspect of comedy that originated in Chicago,” said Ramakrishnan. “The best comedians have all improvised and reacted to situations off the script. That element of spontaneity and surprise is what makes them truly funny. Improv comedy depends on the improvisers working together, trusting and helping each other to create such moments of spontaneity to create comedy.” Unlike theatre and stand-up comedies which require a receptive crowd, improv comedies need an interactive crowd. The improvisers ask the audience for inspiration to create a scene. Nobody would have any idea of how a comedy scene will unfold. They just build a scene spontaneously, and the candidness and the silliness give it a humorous edge.
Despite the city’s changing face, comedy has continued to be a constant—even if the form of humour itself has evolved. It has addressed contemporary issues of its time, challenged stereotypes, and often pushed for the reformation of society, too.
“Through their plays, Crazy Mohan and SV Sekar empowered the women of the households by giving them an opportunity to voice out their opinions, in an era when women were usually not allowed to be upfront and bold,” said Srinivasan. “Today I have seen stand-up comedians mocking toxic work culture, especially in the IT companies.
“Comedy is always going to be a mirror of the status quo, debunking the taboos in the city.”
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Padmaja Jayaraman is an independent journalist based in Chennai. She has contributed to publications like The Hindu, Citizen Matters and Madras Musings. You can find her work here. She is on Instagram: @padmaja_jayaraman and Twitter: @PadmajaJayaram1.
