A comedian from the UAE is among 10 semi-finallists in a competition that hopes to sow the seeds of world peace through stand-up comedy.
The Dubai-based Indian comic Nitin Mirani will perform with nine other comedians at renowned comedy club The Laugh Factory in Hollywood on Monday, October 20, and the five who get the most internet votes travelling to Las Vegas on Friday – United Nations Day – to compete for the title of World’s Funniest Person.
“I’m looking forward to the competition because the Chinese guy and the Pakistani guy are friends of mine and I’ve crossed paths with a couple of the others on the comedy festival circuit,” Mirani says.
But can comedy really help to bring peace?
“I think comedy is one of the most sincere ways of entertaining and educating people,” he says. “I connect with you, you connect with me and we have a good time.”
Last summer, with Israeli-Palestinian tensions at the highest they’d been for some time, Jamie Masada hit on the perfect formula for world peace: Forget aboutfighting, just tell jokes to each other.
The former stand-up comic is, after all, the owner of The Laugh Factory, so the idea seemed obvious.
Still, it’s one thing to get an audience laughing at lines like, “Take my mother-in-law – please.”
It’s another thing entirely to bring together people from around the world who are suspicious or antagonistic towards each other – and hope they will laugh at each other. And yet, that’s what he’s trying to do with what he calls the first Funniest Person in the World competition.
He has scoured comedy festivals as far afiels as Afghanistan, South Korea, Egypt and Israel for contenders before online voters narrowed the list to the 10 semi-finalists who will perform at the Laugh Factory in front of a worldwide internet audience on Monday.
“It might sound stupid,” Masada says. “But some people, they sit down, they break bread together, they never hurt each other. Some people, they sit down, they laugh together, they never hurt each other.”
He says he has already seen the comedy approach work – at least on a small scale.
During the latest Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Masada, an Iranian-born Jew, got the idea of defusing tensions for at least one night by hosting a comedy exhibition featuring locally Jewish comedians sharing the stage with their Muslim counterparts.
The idea was that both sides would get together, mingle and learn a little about each other. Instead, both sides gathered on opposite ends of the club and engaged in an unnerving staredown that prompted Masada to begin the show early.
Sunda Croonquist, a black, Orthodox Jew who lives in Beverly Hills, opened things by pointing out to the audience that white people frequently mistake her for Puerto Rican: “I tell them there are two groups of people who know that I’m black. Other black people and the Beverly Hills Police Department.”
Soon jokes were flying about wearing an Arab headdress to an airport and watching people cower in fear. Or of mischievous Muslims who crank up Persian music on the car stereo because they have found it frightens white drivers even more than hip-hop.
Suddenly, both sides were laughing – together.
“At the end of the night they were hugging each other,” Croonquist says – and Masada was off in search of the world’s funniest person.
Some suggested he might save time simply by putting in calls to established comics such as Dave Chappelle, Jay Leno or the countless others who have headlined gigs at The Laugh Factory over the past 35 years. But Masada was having none of that.
The comedy impresario wanted an Olympics-style competition, and even if the contestants weren’t strictly amateurs they would be little-known performers from all over the world.
In Europe he found Mustapha El Atrassi, a French-born Muslim comic who sometimes wears a helmet and parodies the French music duo Daft Punk.
From Finland comes Ishmo Leikola, who says he has found the solution to America’s national debt problem – don’t pay it. “The country has an army. The bank has four cashiers and a cleaning lady.”
The semifinalists
Nitin Mirani, UAE. Mirani bills himself as “Dubai’s much-loved comedic genius.” He has performed his Komic Sutra comedy show in India, the US, Britain, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Maldives and several Middle Eastern countries. The publication DNA India called his show, “A laugh riot!”
Mustapha El Atrassi, France. Born in France to a Moroccan family, El Atrassi began doing stand-up as a teenager. He appeared in a one-man show in Paris at age 16 and two years later had his own sitcom in Morocco. Since 2008, he’s hosted a morning radio show in France.
Ishmo Leikola, Finland. He performs stand-up in both English and Finnish, appearing at clubs throughout Europe. He won his country’s stand-up rookie of the year award in 2003 and has been honoured five times as the favourite performer at Tomatoes! Tomatoes!, the Nordic countries’ largest comedy festival.
Vittorrio Leonardi, South Africa. Leonardi has appeared in comedy clubs throughout South Africa and taught comedy at St Mary’s Diocesan School for Girls in Pretoria. He’s also the resident emcee at several South African comedy clubs.
Saad Haroon, Pakistan. A founding member of the Pakistani improvisational group Blackfish and other comedy troupes, Saad also created the English-language Pakistani show The Real News, a mix of political and social satire. He's performed on comedy tours in several countries, including the United States.
Archie Bezos, Spain. Bezos has been described as a Spanish pioneer. He made his TV debut in 2012 with an appearance on a Comedy Central show featuring upcoming comedians. The following year he won the top award at Madrid’s FIC comedy festival and recently toured Spain.
Vivek Mahbubani, an ethnic Indian comic representing his native China. Mahbubani, who performs in English and Cantonese, was honoured as Hong Kong’s funniest Chinese comedian in 2007 and its funniest English-language comedian in 2008.
Tiffany Haddish, USA. Raised in foster homes in Los Angeles, Haddish says her social worker steered her toward a comedy camp for children after hearing her stories about her imaginary friends. She's appeared on Def Comedy Jam, Comedy Central's Reality Bites, and recently took part in a USO Comedy Tour to entertain US military personnel in Japan.
Waddah Swar, Saudi Arabia. Originally from Bahrain, Swar has been described by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the pioneers of Middle Eastern comedy. He won the Funniest in the Arab World competition at the Kit Kat Comedy Break Show in Dubai in 2013.
Lioz Shem Tov, Israel. A visual comedian, Tov frequently uses a range of props to work comically bad magic tricks into his act, which he can perform in either Hebrew or English. He made it to the semifinal round of the NBC series Last Comic Standing in 2008.
Watch the live semi-final live at 7am on Tuesday morning UAE time at www.laughfactory.com.
* Associated Press
