KARACHI: Stand-up comedy has been a male-dominated act in Pakistan but not anymore. With the ascent of the Auratnaak Show, we now have female stand-up comedians who are not just good, but also excel in their own diversified way. On what was a potential Chand Raat in Karachi, five women comedians did their stand-up act at ThotSpot (at Badar Commercial, Defence) and didn’t disappoint the audience.

Annie Shamim — an architect — kicked off the proceedings and warmed the audience’s attention with her jokes on feminism. She told the audience that all her jokes were based on her experience with men and if anyone could relate to it, then that was a coincidence. She made fun of the living (read as present) as well as the dead, terming death to be the shortest route to being declared ‘bohat achay thay’. Entrepreneur and theatre artist Sana Khan Niazi was next to join the smile-a-thon and blamed life for being the way it is. The funny part of her act was the mention of Rumi who — in her opinion — would have been active on FB, catching those using his quotes, had he been alive. She then went onto mention those friends who act surprised on meeting her yet don’t remember their names; jokes about those people who work in multinational corporations and pretend to love their jobs got the loudest laughs and applause.

A published author Ayesha Tariq’s stint had more to do with parents than anything else and maybe that’s the reason people were able to relate to her. She told the audience about the many issues a single girl over 25 has to face in Pakistan, even if she has achieved something meaningful in life. She did forget her lines when either the phone rang or she changed the page but she covered that with such an energy that no one seemed to mind. In the end, she told the audience that her mother was present in the audience and she loved her a lot, although most of the things she said in her act were true.

Faiza Saleem, who duplicated as host of the show, got a standing ovation at the end of her act because she asked the audience to stand up. She was the first one to crack dirty jokes, but they did not exceed the limitations of decency (okay, some of them did.) She introduced her husband-to-be after the stint mainly because most of her skits revolved around him. The comedian, who was in the skit team at Lux Style Awards, told the audience that wherever she goes (to Dubai, since that’s the only place she can afford), people recognise her.

The last artist of the show — Fatema Shah — had different type of performance — you can call it experimental since she was shown talking to her inner self that was both weird and refreshing. Had her performance been in the middle, it would have provided the audience with a breather from laughters. Her act was mostly in English, limiting the target audience but one hopes she comes up strongly in her future acts. On the whole, the event was a success.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2017