I have just had the fortune of being part of two distinctly different evenings hosted by The Park as part of their New Festival. I had unfortunately missed Preethi Athreya’s Inaugural Dance Performance but managed to make it to Vidur Kapur’s Stand Up Comedy Act and to Dastangoi which was billed as the revival of the ancient art of storytelling.

I have always been of the opinion that the moment a performer takes to the stage, whether he or she is a dancer, actor, musician, acrobat, buffoon or whatever, he essentially becomes a story teller. The story may be different, it may be funny, sad, action packed, placid...whatever... but up there on the stage is the story teller, down here is the audience and what lies in between is the tale.

In this context the Stand Up Comedy Routine has always fascinated me. While the way it evolved so quickly from being a mere party routine to a form by itself is rather impressive, what is more awe inspiring is how the form allows the story teller to use his or her ethnicity or oddity and the audience make up itself to strike a common chord that serves as the connect between each other.

Or at least that was how I thought it used to be.

Because I don’t know how and I don’t know when. But I seem to have missed the turn. I don’t even know when the definition of Stand Up Comedy or even plain old comedy shifted from ‘laugh with me’ to ‘laugh at me’.

Laugh at me – I am fat. Laugh at me – I am Jewish. Laugh at me – I am black, brown, yellow...Laugh at me – I am blonde. Laugh at me – I am Polish. Or Mexican. Or Puerto Rican. Or more recently, laugh at me – I am Indian. Not the plain brown piece of wheatish complexioned bread. But the American Indian. Arrey Baba, not the American Indian who was there on the continent 1492 BC (Before Columbus) but the American Indian who has evolved as a confused breed in the last few decades.

Here I take a pause and catch my breath.

Now where was I?

In all fairness I must also confess that I seem to have lost the track of story-telling which I always thought was an art of keeping audiences engrossed and occupied and perhaps even informed. But never did I imagine that story telling could be reduced to an exercise in aggression from the performers’ side and a self induced stupor of masochistic madness that I am still shuddering from the penance. And applause reduced to mechanical clapping on demand (demand after obnoxious demand...Come On Clap for Me Hyderabad).

Rambling am I? Well...

Vidur’s was to me was a case of someone trying too hard to live up to a reputation. A reputation which was not even a myth yet and one that had been created under the falsest of pretences.

And he tried to milk the audience with his snippets of misfortune. Oh My God I am Indian. And worse, I am gay!!! I went to school in Delhi, London and the US of A. I kicked up my corporate job with Booze Allen and Who’sThat...The only trick he didn’t try was telling us that he had been gang raped...and the only words he seemed to have learnt in his cumulative schools were fuck, cock, penis and Bitch! And surprise surprise he did NOT have an unhappy childhood.

The Dastangoi team which spoke impeccable English and delightful Urdu re-established my faith in performance. There was harmony at work here ladies and gentlemen...a unique case of a story sailing down a river of attention...and helpful voices steering it, pushing it, powering it along.

The format of using two individuals to tell the story...the idea of giving them both dynamically changing roles...giving them the space to explore the horizons of the tale but restricting them to the physical limitation of the stage...it took the best of a variety of techniques and blended them, fused them into a replay of history...

Something that made me say at the end of a thoroughly enjoyable evening...Dastangoi...what a story!