Mediatisation,digital spaces and live performance: Understanding Indian stand-up comedy and evolving performance landscapes

Introduction

When the lockdown was announced after the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, people were scrambling to understand what it means to communicate with each other face-to-face, in person, being in the same place at the same time. As much of the workforce moved online, so also, did performance. In this paper, I analyse how the Indian stand-up comedy industry grappled with the pandemic in the early days (2020–early 2021), and the strategies comedians employed to ensure they do not lose their livelihoods and their relevance as their primary workspace: the cafes, clubs and bars remained shut.

I reflect on the methodological aspects of analysing a stand-up comedy show as a researcher, performing a (digital) comedy show as a comedian, and appreciating the show as an audience member, as the comedians continue to experiment with various digital platforms as their stage spaces. Philip Auslander postulates how one could understand live performance in a highly mediatised culture. Mediatisation, as Auslander defines it, is when our lives are not just dominated by the use of media technologies, but that our perception of realities is influenced significantly by them. (2008: 32). The idea of a ‘live’ performance, as Auslander states, came into existence at the same time that the technology for a recorded performance did. Auslander primarily emphasises that even the opposition between the live and mediatised forms is contingent upon ‘their positions within the cultural economy’ which is dependent on ‘changing historical and technological circumstances’ and not necessarily ‘ontological’ ones (2008: 56). That is, the privileging of live shows to that of recorded (television, cinema and now digital new media) or vice versa is not because of inherent differences between them as forms, but external factors that Auslander brackets under the concept of cultural economy. ¹

Stand-up comedy as a form heavily relies on the aspect of spatial and temporal liveness to elicit laughter. A comedian becomes popular mainly because they are able to connect with the audience and make them laugh. It is at the interstices of digital vs. live as it grapples with the Indian cultural economy of comedy that I place this study as well.

In the vast body of literature on humour and laughter, three theories have been considered classical from which arise most later theorisations. These are superiority, incongruity and relief theories. Superiority theory posits that laughter is elicited from a perceived sense of superiority by the joke-teller over the target of the jokes (this could be in reference to an individual’s superiority or that of a community (Rutter, 1997: 9). As laughter forms and maintains community, it also excludes and alienates anyone who is not ‘in’ on the joke (Farb, 1981) . Michael Billig coined the term ‘unlaughter’ to characterise ‘not laughing when laughter might otherwise be expected, hoped for or demanded’ (2005: 192). Depending on the social location of the target of the jokes, the unlaughter could serve both as a form of resistance or sign of disapproval. Incongruity theory suggests that humour arises out of the recognition of the element of surprise in the joke, therefore highlighting the cognitive aspect of a joke. The surprise originates from connecting two seemingly unrelated, ‘inconsistent’, ‘incongruous’ subjects together (Carrell, 2008: 303; Beattie quoted in Oring, 1987: 277). Oring further develops this theory to indicate that laughter occurs at the perception of ‘appropriate incongruity’, ‘embedded in a particular understanding of the world’ that is ‘complex yet intuitive’ (277) indicating that the process of cognition itself is complex involving both social and cultural perceptions of the world. The relief theory is more psychological in that it posits that humour through laughter, facilitates release or relief in the person laughing at the joke, something that would perhaps otherwise have caused stress or may not have been socially sanctioned (Carrell, 2008: 309). Thus, it can be argued that most of these theories acknowledge the social aspect of humour generation and enjoyment in some sense. In this paper, we shall see how this social aspect is expressed or gets altered as one looks at the stand-up performance as mediatised.

Indian stand-up comedy as mediatised humour performance: historicising liveness of Indian comedy

The current form of stand-up comedy is not the first kind of humour performance that Indian audiences have been exposed to. There has been extensive documentation of satire and parody traditions in India beginning with Bharata’s Natyashastra (a treatise on Indian dance) where humour is one of the nine primary rasas (emotions/flavours) for performance. The ‘comic sentiment arises from the erotic that is “the happiness or pleasure” that is “connected with desired objects”’ (quoted in Kumar, 2012: 82). Humour was thus considered a significant part of dance and drama in general. Lee Siegal explores the comic traditions of India by examining Sanskrit texts in Laughing Matters: Comic Tradition in India (Siegal, 1987). Similarly, David Shulman notes the importance of the character of the Vidusaka in Indian drama to ‘challenge the normative nature of society, the “proper” ordering of nature’s categories’(1985: 156). In her study on Tamil Special Drama, Susan Seizer (2005) notes that it was in the comedic routines that performers had the space to improvise, speaking colloquially about stigmas the performers face, ‘reflecting aloud on issues of gender, class and Tamil identity’ (19) thus providing a colloquial link ‘between real life and the other life of the mythological dramatic scenes’ (20). Leonard Freedman (2009) and Ritu Gairola Khanduri (2014) trace the beginnings of the rich culture of political satire in India within the colonial legacy including that of political cartoons. The first form of traditional performance comedians associated with the modern form of stand-up they practice today is Kerala’s Chakyar Koothu. It is solo performance by a (generally male) chakkyar (the community that performs this art form). These performances would usually be performed within dedicated spaces in Hindu temples. The performance is a monologue accompanied by live music too where the chakkyar engages in contemporary social commentary while basing it on Indian mythological texts such as Mahabharata. ² Many comedians today have also called it ‘traditional stand-up comedy’ because it entails elements from mythology as well as features such as solo humourous commentary as well (Naidu 2016; Paul, G.V., 2016; Narayanan 2018).

Despite there being a vast body of literature on humour, comedy and its evolution in India, most contemporary stand-up comedians mainly associate the current form of stand-up performance with The Great Indian Laughter Challenge (TGLIC), a Hindi-language stand-up comedy reality show that began airing in 2004 on television as the first instance of being introduced to it. This is interesting because unlike the American counterparts who were moved from ‘live’ to ‘recorded live’, Indian audiences primarily were exposed to the recorded live performances only. ³ That is, the American comedians and audiences were introduced to the idea of live stand-up comedy in clubs before the practice of such comedy being recorded live became common. However, Indian audiences became aware of the form of stand-up comedy first in its recorded live format (through the television show) than the live one. The concept of a comedy club did not exist in India until much later. Comedians who did try stand-up earlier, did so within public settings of a club, but were still unknown to the general comedy audience (PTI, 2016).

The launch of YouTube in India introduced the Indian audiences to Indo-Canadian comedian Russel Peters. The live comedy club experience, however, came much later, around 2009, with the establishment of the Comedy Store by Don Ward. now veteran comedian Vir Das was instrumental in popularising the form for local comedy aspirants. YouTube also meant a space for aspiring Indian comedians to create their own content. Now well-known stand-up comedians like Kenny Sebastian first became popular as YouTubers who use humour prominently in their content before being identified with stand-up comedy (Roy, 2015). Given its close association with the digital space, the ecosystem of the Indian comedy industry today is not limited to just the live stand-up comedy scene but also other content on YouTube and other OTT platforms. Many of the stand-up comedians are also improvisers, actors in web series and films, and other forms of media entertainment. The increased access to different kinds of content online owing to better internet speeds at cheaper rates allowed for the overlap between different genres of online content production, not all of which had previously been associated with comedy or humour (such as podcasts).

The Indian experience of stand-up comedy has always been heavily mediatised and thus cannot been seen in opposition to the live experience of watching a stand-up performance. As the world grappled with the coronavirus pandemic, particularly in the context of stand-up comedy, comedians emphasised the need for the comedy club ecosystem. Most comedians cited that the ‘thrill’ of performance and the opportunity to ‘hone their craft’ still comes from live public, ticketed shows, that have been temporarily deemed impossible due to the ongoing pandemic (Pathak, 2020; Mehrotra, 2020). Anticipating a post-COVID-19 world, comedians were sceptical about the logistics of producing and performing at a comedy club given that audiences may have to be restricted in numbers and social distancing would have a very different effect on the laughter produced by them (Ranjan, 2020).

Some of the early comedians, who now have a firm footing in the industry, do not face too much of a difficulty primarily because of their multimodal presence, or prior deals with OTT platforms (such as a Netflix or Amazon Prime Video special being released irrespective of the spread of the virus). For instance, Vir Das’ Netflix series Hasmukh was released in April and Amazon Prime Video released 14 new ten-minute stand-up comedy clips comedians in August 2020 (DA Staff, 2020). In fact, some of these comedians have spoken about how only around 10–20% of their monthly income is generated through live performances in comedy clubs while the rest is gained through non-stand-up avenues. ⁴ However, several comedians, particularly those who were starting out, or had recently quit their day jobs to pursue stand-up comedy, faced serious setbacks, having to borrow money from other fellow comedians as well due to lack of live shows or even open mics to test out their new material (Pathak, 2020). There are also several comedians in the burgeoning stand-up industry in India who have remained full-time live performers for more than three-four years, depending on the audiences buying tickets to their performances, to make their mark in the industry (Mehrotra, 2020). That is, they do not have a YouTube channel or stand-up comedy videos uploaded onto the internet such that the general audience would be aware of them, or for them to be able to generate alternative income through YouTube views. ⁵

Further in the paper, I explore how ‘live performance’ gets readapted to the COVID-19 pandemic, focussing primarily on the ways in which the performers have been experimenting with the form (Mehrotra, 2020)). I argue here that the ‘symbolic capital of the live performance’ – simply being co-present in the spatial and temporal zones as the comedians’ as more valuable, transcending economic gain – becomes pronounced in this context (Auslander 2008). However, unlike Auslander, I contend that the prominence of the symbolic capital is contextual.

Rationale

The idea for this paper arose from the need to devise a way to read and analyse stand-up comedy performances that are not ‘live’ in the sense that I was not ‘co-present spatially and temporally’ while the performance was ongoing (Auslander, 2008). Much of the content I analysed for my doctoral dissertation, of which this paper is a part, comes from the online videos that comedians have uploaded to their respective YouTube channels or are available as specials or as trailers of the same on other OTT platforms.

In the Indian context, analysing live stand-up comes with its own challenges because of its nascency. Being around a decade old in its current form, the performance genre is still in its experimental stage. Comedians’ performances remain raw. In order to fully understand the context of a comedy performance, the text of the joke is crucial. The range of publicly available content is limited (which is more often digital) and subjective to the seniority of the comedian. ⁶ These jokes are not work-in-progress in the sense that there might be another version of the joke that the comedian has performed elsewhere. That is, mostly senior comedians who have performed their content several times before live audiences and have capitalised sufficiently on these jokes decide to put their content out on the web. Thus, for the purpose of this paper, these video clips will be treated as final versions of the jokes. ⁷

Several studies have examined various aspects of live stand-up comedy, including performance styles, the functions it performs and its socio-cultural significance (Gilbert, 1997; Koziski, 1984; Lockyer and Pickering, 2005; Mintz, 1985; Rutter, 1997; Schwarz 2009; Seizer, 2011). Studies are also now emerging that focus on the role of audiences in the success of a performance and how they respond to it (Lockyer and Myers, 2011; Hattingh, 2018). Studies that focus on the Indian stand-up scene primarily look at stand-up comedy as a means of self-expression, the building of a new public sphere, as an important popular cultural artefact also look at the construction of identities through the form of stand-up (Kay, 2018; Miller, 2020; Paul, 2017; Sahoo and Das, 2018; Sohail and Hasan, 2018). In addition, no studies so far have attempted a methodological enquiry into the analysis of a stand-up comedy performance in the digital space. Through this paper, I aim to fill this gap and think through strategies that could be used to understand the stand-up clip as not just digital content, or a performance that has been reproduced for mass reach online, but as a digital performance with its own distinct features where certain elements of the performances were adapted or even added in order to make the performance more ‘engaging’ for the audience. I reflect on the possibilities of analysing both digital ‘live’ and ‘recorded’ stand-up comedy performance.

Contending the opposition between ‘live’ and ‘recorded’ performances

Philip Auslander postulates that liveness and mediatisation are not oppositional experiences, except in the context of cultural economy, or how much revenue it might generate for the parties involved. The relationship between the two is ‘historical and contingent’, not ‘ontologically given or technologically determined’ (2008: 56). As he suggests, ‘live performance...itself is a product of media technologies’ (2008: 24). In this paper, I contend that even in the context of cultural economy, the live and recorded are not oppositional in the case of Indian stand-up. Performances are recorded multiple times by the comedians with the purpose of uploading digital versions of it. These are then publicised at a time when the comedians decide to ‘retire’ the joke or want to attract more live audiences to watch them perform their new material. Unlike Auslander’s suggestion, the cultural economy for the live joke vs. the recorded one is complementary in the Indian context. The recreation of the performance is not done with the intent of replacing the live ‘theatrical’ with the recorded, the two become different performances in themselves rather than replications, as we shall see further.

Scholars such as Peggy Phelan who hold the primacy of the live performance as significant argue that the disappearance and subsequent retention of the performance primarily in memory ‘make it a privileged site of resistance’, protected from ‘forces of regulation and control’ (Phelan qtd. in Auslander, 2008: 128). Undoubtedly, analysing only the digital content barely skims the surface of the range of stand-up comedy that is being performed today. Much of the nuance and rawness found during live shows is absent in the recorded show. As mentioned before, the ones hit hardest by the pandemic were novice comedians who were making money and honing their craft mainly by performing at live shows. The live space is significant for newer comedians to find their comedic voice as well as their niche audiences because they are allowed to make mistakes, tell jokes which may not be funny, so to speak, and test out their viability in front of an audience. The stage is less regulated than the online space. One can hear comedians bring in perspectives and humour, particularly if it is social or political satire, that they would never make public through their digital networks. In fact, comedians have got into serious trouble with the law because of their digital content. Kunal Kamra, a well-known political comedian, has had several FIRs filed against him because of the content in his stand-up comedy. He also lost his apartment and was banned from flying by four airline companies because he questioned a popular news anchor for his biased reporting (Scroll Staff, 2020a).

However, even live spaces are not without their own sets of regulations. Some comedy clubs require comedians to produce a script of their performances in advance. In Kamra’s case, the publicity his digital content received resulted in heavy regulation of his live shows as well. Many shows were cancelled, and he has been subject to violence during some performances. Further, the digital space may not be as infallible as it is made out to be because even technology – sound recording, videotapes – deteriorates over time with every use (Auslander, 2008). This includes the internet too which hosts content on webpages whose links may cease to exist after a certain point in time (Auslander, 2008: 48–50). For instance, much like Kamra, comedian Agrima Joshua had uploaded a video onto her YouTube channel in 2019 that strongly criticised the political system. However, she was forced to take it down almost a year after it was uploaded because a certain section of it resurfaced on the internet, with someone claiming that she had insulted the Maratha king Shivaji in the video. The act of taking it down was mainly prompted by the numerous rape threats she received as well as direct threats of legal action against her by senior politicians (Scroll Staff, 2020b). Unlike Kamra, who could afford to refuse an apology to the news anchor or continue to put out his comedy videos still strongly critical of the government, Joshua’s only video clip is no longer accessible. ⁸

Another significant part of experiencing a stand-up performance is the sense of community generated through shared laughter. Laughter is a social, shared experience as the audience members recognise and relate to the premise of the joke. As Lockyer and Myers put it:

In live stand-up comedy the ‘spectacle’ (stand-up comedian) and his/her understanding of what topics can or cannot be joked about are fundamental to the sense of community. If the stand-up comedian’s understanding is not shared by all, or a few, of the audience members then the joke is unlikely to create laughter, thus jeopardising the sense of community (2011: 182).

This aspect holds good while watching both live and recorded comedy performances. The difference lies in the way in which the sense of community is communicated by the audience. While immediate laughter is the currency with which a good joke is judged as being part of or excluded from a community in a live show, the number of times a video is liked, shared or commented on decides the popularity (in turn, hilarity) of the recorded joke. In this case, neither the temporality nor the spatial co-presence of the performance matter to be able to enjoy it. Responding to the joke through these digital gestures (liking sharing commenting) even years after the performance was first uploaded is just like a laughter response by audience members in real-time. The digital video of the comedy performance hence is not just a replication of an ‘original’ live performance, but another performance in itself because of the features of audience response that the digital space allows.

This can be further understood through Auslander’s later theorisation of digital liveness. According to him, digital liveness is ‘a specific relation between self and other, a particular way of “being involved with something.” The experience of liveness results from our conscious act of grasping virtual entities as live in response to the claims they make on us’ (Auslander, 2012: 10). That is, the technological entity itself makes a claim on us, or acts upon us, expecting a response. In this case, the claim being made is the performance of a joke, with the comedian expecting response in the form of laughter or no laughter depending on whether the audience finds the joke funny. Once this ‘claim’ as Auslander puts it, is accepted, the event is experienced as a ‘live’ one. This definition is helpful because it does not postulate technological determinism, nor does it lay the responsibility of liveness solely on an audience. Auslander’s is a ‘constructivist’ approach that accounts for and deems as important actions by both the digital and the biological (human) entities. As we shall see, both the digital stand-up performances prior to the coronavirus as well as performances that have emerged as a result of it, can be read as live in different contexts.

In the next section, I explain the specifics of the contexts analysed in order to formulate my methodological reflections.

Recorded live stand-up performances

Thus, it becomes clear that for Indian stand-up comedy, the digital is an extension of the live because of the possibility of generating income in both spaces. Monetisation of the digital content happens based on the number of views, comments and subscribers to the comedians’ channels. Newer audiences perceive the digital clip as representative of the comedians’ brand of humour and would then buy tickets for the live performances. Being recorded gives the performance an ‘accumulable value’ (Auslander, 2008: 28). Therefore, today comedians put much effort into digitising the performance by making the ‘recorded live’ experience just as real for the audiences watching them on their digital screens. Just as initial television broadcasts mimicked live theatre so as to give the audience the feel of ‘being on the scene’ (Auslander, 2008: 18), comedians are careful to record and edit videos in a manner that makes home audiences feel they are at the club. One of the ways in which they achieve this is by setting up multiple cameras focussing on the comedian itself, and not the audience members, although the laughter and expressions of the audience is audible and visible to some extent.

The other significant aspect of the ‘recorded live’ clips is the subtitles feature that is a staple feature of all stand-up videos on YouTube. The subtitles also act as translations of the jokes (into English if the comic performs in Hindi) or a transliteration of Hindi itself. These subtitles also include ‘asides’ provided by the comedians for the digital audience. Most times, these are meant to be humourous (self-)reflections of the comedians about their joking techniques, or to provide more context to the joke which only live audiences might be aware of. In the process of doing so, the comedians tailor the videos for the audiences watching their videos on their devices by rhetorically manipulating the performance through subtitles. That is, sometimes they use the subtitles to insert some of their own musings while they were performing it live for the benefit of the online audiences. Some of the videos also include shots of the audience, and their laughter to indicate a sense of virtual community as the online audience watches the clips. Under consideration in this paper are videos that have English subtitles, while the comedians perform bilingually: employing a mix of Hindi and English for their performance.

For instance, in the video ‘Arranged Marriage’, comedian Aayushi Jagad talks about being single: ‘So, long story short, I am single. I’m single and it’s offensive to me [pause] because I’m bisexual. Do you know what that means? [looking at the audience for responses] The rest of you who are looking at me, clueless, I know you watch porn, fuucck you! [laughter and applause]. Hai na? [right?]’ (Aayushi Jagad, 2019: 0:28).

As the audience erupts in laughter and applause, there is a statement written within asterisks: *takes a moment to celebrate tharki [lewd] behaviour* as she is looking at the audience’s reaction. The implication here is that despite being attracted to both sexes, it is ironical that she is still single. – The expression within asterisks indicates Jagad’s astuteness in assessing the audience’s disposition to watch porn – that they might prefer to watch porn featuring bisexuality. Her observation using the phrase ‘fuck you’ is also acknowledged and accepted by the audience through laughter. This sheds light on some common misconceptions about bisexuality in India (that it is still not spoken of openly and people primarily come across it on pornographic websites). However, her use of the word ‘celebrates’ works to normalise the practice of watching porn, particularly for the online audiences. The live audience’s laughter, clearly heard in the video is expected to also affect the online audiences who may not be temporally or spatially co-present, inducing laughter. In this context, the way Jagad does the subtitling also speaks to the specific audiences she is targetting. The use of only the word ‘tharki’ without translation indicates that she wanted to include it, to introduce an additional layer of humour, but also targets an audience that knows the meaning of the word (therefore a bilingual one speaking both English and Hindi). The effect of the rhetorical insertion is that the online audience too is provided with exclusive entertainment, recognising and appreciating the manipulation.

In this video, the camera angles are solely focussed on Jagad alternating between wide angle and close-up shots. We only hear the audience as it laughs and claps and can see the silhouettes of a few people in the front row. Other than that, the attention of the online audiences is directed to remain on Aayushi. It becomes evident here that the comedian has more control over what the online audience sees and responds to in a recorded video as opposed to a live audience where the action is more spontaneous.

In the video ‘Ma aur Sushma’ (KuchBhiMehta, 2018), comedian Aakash Mehta begins towards the end of a recently finished punchline that he is extending to a new context that is not included in the video. The beginning of the video has Mehta saying ‘Insaan log se bharosa hi uth gaya hai, full on’ [he has lost faith in human beings] (0:05). However, in the subtitles, he includes a direct statement referring to the online audience: ‘*Some breakup-related jokes that transitioned into my parents*’ rather than what he is actually saying (0:03). The aside here, a direct address to the online audience, helps them contextualise his statement which would otherwise seem out of place. That is, they understand that Mehta is saying that he has lost faith in human beings in some vague but relatable context of a breakup which has segued into talking about his parents.

Further in the video, he talks about why his mother’s contribution in his life more than his father’s is: ‘moms have way more biological imperative to take care of you...their love is hormonal’ (0:14). Many of his performances also include him giggling at his own jokes. While this may be off-putting in most cases, his laughter induces more laughter in an already amused audience. While the joke is continuing, he makes gestures indicating pregnancy while looking at his own belly saying, ‘moms are there, and they’re just [struggling to find words]’. While he is gesturing, in the subtitles, he writes: ‘Moms are there and I need a better vocabulary’ followed by ‘seriously’ within parentheses as he continues to fumble with words trying to explain that women are invested in motherhood because of the experience of pregnancy, by enacting a pregnant woman on stage. In the same video, continuing to talk about his mother’s overwhelming concern for him, he forgets the joke, and simply giggles. The subtitles at this point read: ‘*buffering*’ (1:24).

Camera angles make evident the rapport Mehta has built with his live audience. These angles are also designed to make the online audiences feel like a part of the live action itself as the audience reactions of applause and laughter are heard along with Mehta’s performance. Mehta effectively capitalises even his visual and performative fumbles into humourous material as he includes the subtitles addressed to the audience online. As a performer online, Mehta has to compete with other online content to keep the audiences interested in watching him. Since online audiences do not have enough incentive to stay on till the end of the video, such strategies help the comedians stand out. These comments become ways in which the comedian is attempting to interact directly with the online audience as well despite not being spatially or temporally present with them. Thus, the online videos themselves become not just replays of the live event, but an entirely new performance. The subtitles then, in this case become the ‘claim’ that the video performance is making of the online audiences, which the audience then responds to by laughing and/or watching the video till the end.

Online ‘live shows’: how coronavirus changed the meaning of a live stand-up performance

In this section, I look at ‘live stand-up comedy’ online. A type of performance that began to be experimented with more mainly during the early months of the pandemic, here, the audience and the comedians are on the same plane only temporally. I look at how comedians have described the experience of adapting to an exclusively online ‘liveness’ to their stand-up performances. Comics have spoken of going on conference calls with fellow comedians across the country to discuss strategies they can adapt, even temporarily, to the new form of liveness (Akundi, 2020).

For instance, they have even tried to simulate a live performance within their bedrooms by literally ‘standing up’, placing the laptop and the mic (if there is one) perched on different furniture to resemble that of a mic stand (Kanungo, 2020; Sachdeva, 2020). Where earlier there were hosts of the show to gauge the pulse of the audience members and ‘warm them up’ for the main performances, now there is the ‘moderator’ who lets you into the Zoom or respective meeting rooms. The job of the moderator is to make sure that the audience is not on mute or off-video, according to the preference of the comedians. Trying to simulate the live performances as much as possible, the comedians request that the audiences keep their video and audio on so that they can see and hear their laughter which has been the primary form of validation for the comic to know if they have been successful. Sometimes, the audiences are encouraged to be on mute as they keep their videos on and encouraged to use the chat window in the meeting rooms to record their responses textually, much like the ‘comments’ section on YouTube.

Comedians also mention having to talk slower than they would at a live (non-digital) show to account for the internet speed and connectivity issues (Dhingra, 2020). This results in punchlines (for the audience) and laughter (for the comedians) being heard with a few seconds of lag. In addition to this they also have to grapple with other technical glitches such as power cuts and video buffering because internet speeds are not uniform across different regions even within the same city or locality.

This attempt at simulation of the live scene, however, also brings with it new challenges. Heckling takes on a new form at online live shows as the audience is allowed to comment in the middle of the show (Cyril, 2020). As they all adapt themselves to online performance, comedians insist that the ‘kick’ of the comedy shows really lies in looking at audiences, being face to face with them and hearing their laughter real-time (Mehrotra, 2020). Comedian Vir Das, in an interview talks about why the Zoom audience interactions are different:

The competition between the live and mediatised forms of performance in the context of cultural economy is demonstrated in the anxieties that the comedians express regarding the future of live stand-up in India. Many comedy producers have now started ticketing their Zoom shows, where initially they were being offered for free. However, even the pricing has been lowered and comedians and producers are worried about the appropriate pricing. While several of the other cost factors such as the cap for the club, and other logistics do not apply in this context, ‘getting an audience to pay for each show/experience is a little tough. They still see the show as “something online” and compare it with the pricing of a monthly Netflix/Prime account’ as comedian Alick Bailey says (Sharma, 2020). Moreover, most of the content that people have been watching online before the pandemic hit has been free of cost. Therefore, the feeling that even comedy shows are something online affects revenues to a great extent. Another significant worry for the comedians is that if and when the audiences get accustomed to not just the form of performance but also the pricing of the tickets for the shows, the expectations of ticket pricing for live shows at clubs may change and that might even lead them to further losses.

Thus, Indian stand-up comedy could not emulate live performance. Moreover, this mediatised form not just competes with the pre-COVID public comedy shows but also the pre-existing and already successful free digital entertainment that audiences were able to access. What follows is the realisation that the simulation of the live shows at clubs is more important for the comedians rather than the audiences. The effect on the audiences was both ways. Where they would be expected to pay Rs. 150–200 for even an open mic, audiences are able to watch the recorded live shows online for free without much to lose. At the same time, many also missed the live club experience they could occasionally have before becuase of the space and form of sociality the club enabled. Additionally, live online stand-up can be accessed and performed from anywhere in the country. That is, there is a chance of national viewership for the audiences as well as performers. Thus, while the cultural economy is not part of the performance per se, it affects the performance a great deal as it influences participation both by audiences and comedians at the same time in different ways.

Conclusions

This paper attempted a methodological reflection on the ways in which an online performance can be read and analysed while keeping in mind the distinctness of the live from the digital, or mediatised ones. Taking from Phillip Auslander's formulation that mediatisation is more of a worldview that enabled by media technologies, I argued here that in the case of stand-up, even with the primacy of the live form remaining intact, it is not seen in opposition to the online versions of the pre-recorded stand-up performances. The only space where some opposition was evident was during the online live performances that were experimented with during the pandemic. This is because the Indian stand-up comedy scene grew along with the digital scene with the launch of video streaming platforms like YouTube, Netflix and Amazon Prime. Just as Indian comedy audiences were getting exposed to the comedy club experience, they were also introduced to stand-up comedy performed on YouTube through comedians like Russel Peters and later Kenny Sebastian and others. These performances became entirely new texts with which audiences could engage in their own time and respond through various digital gestures. The primacy of the liveness in terms of spatial and temporal co-presence was more important for the comedian to build rapport, as well as sell tickets. Online live shows put live stand-up comedy on par with other free (humourous and non-humourous) digital content, which meant that fewer audiences chose to pay to see online live performances.

I analysed the recorded live performances that comedians uploaded online and demonstrated how these videos employ certain rhetorical strategies to not simply replicate the past performance but to re-perform it online with the help of subtitles and camera angles designed to give the audience a sense of being there at the venue real-time. This happens because the subtitles are used to directly refer to online audiences by simulating a conversation with them by inserting comments to contextualise an incomplete joke or to simply create an additional layer of humour as they explain their body language and idiosyncrasies during performance. What counts as a performance takes on multiple valences as the digital space allows for multiple forms of engagement (claims: gestures such as likes and comments) with the content that do not require temporal co-presence. Features such as subtitles help situate the performance text within both local and global spaces as they attempt to enhance accessibility through translations and transliterations.

By analysing the responses of comedians trying out ‘being live’ online, I examined the various aspects that the comedians are trying to replicate to make it similar to the comedy club performances, and what they change: the pricing, the lighting of the room, placing of the mic within their space of performance, insisting on the audio and video functions of the audiences remain on and heckling during the performance. These efforts taken to simulate liveness were more for the benefit of the comedians rather than the audiences. However, the comedians were affected more in terms of financial losses as they slashed rates for comedy shows. As many comedians lost or had to cancel several shows, some were also offered shows by corporate companies but at significantly reduced remunerations, because the shows happened online. For the audiences, the experience of the adaptation to online shows could best be described as ambivalence: an advantage as some had to spend significantly lesser money to watch a comedy show at home, at the same time, those that would have sought a paid live comedy club show refrained from doing so because of the altered nature of the performance on screen.

Auslander’s postulation therefore that digital liveness is a relationship that ‘results from our conscious act of grasping virtual entities as live in response to the claims they make on us’ holds true as recorded live shows made claims on audiences through subtitles while the Zoom shows did so through factors such as internet speeds, connectivity, audience interactions, as well as laughter, all perceived through the digital screens. Liveness therefore becomes a state only characterised by temporal co-presence. The question of ascribing primacy to one form based on cultural economy (which one makes more money) here becomes complicated because some audiences began to prefer online live shows for their cheaper rates, and some refrained from watching them altogether because they preferred the live comedy club experience. Comedians preferred comedy club shows both for the experience of the live performance as well as better financial returns.

As of early January 2021, stand-up has moved back into comedy clubs. Audiences are encouraged to attend live shows while being reassured of appropriate sanitisation mechanisms and social distancing in place. Whether we prefer live shows or online videos, the amalgamation of media technologies with liveness is evident now more so than ever.