Anirban Dasgupta to bring Cry Daddy to Bengaluru after Soho Theatre showcase


Comedian Anirban Dasgupta

Comedian Anirban Dasgupta
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

“Imagine if a football match was a comedy show; at the start there would be no way of knowing who the winner would be at the end of an hour,” says Anirban Dasgupta, over phone from Mumbai, trying to explain his latest show Cry Daddy without giving away too much.

This week will see the stand up comic from Mumbai perform at Soho Theatre in London, UK. “Cry Daddy marks the first time I am presenting an experimental show; up till now it has been pure stand up inspired by politics and personal experiences. That has been the pattern so far.”

With Cry Daddy, “I feel I have unlocked something new,” says Anirban, adding, “It is a game with the audience and me, all the way down to the last joke. The idea behind it was to go beyond regular stand up and present an immersive show.”

Unlike usual routines where there is a limited interaction with the audience, mostly on a one-on-one basis, with a random member of the crowd, in Cry Daddy, Anirban sees the audience, “as an unit that is playing against me, irrespective of its demographics. I see the audience as one.”

As with most live shows, Anirban says he works off the audiences’ answers with no way of determining how the evening will pan out and has devised a point system to help each team score, complete with yellow cards and the like.

He says the idea for the show germinated over the years while performing with international acts and analysing crowd makeup. He fleshed it out at the Melbourne Comedy Festival earlier this year and followed it up with trial shows in India from April.

The 30-odd shows he has held since then have been a win-win for both parties, he says. At a recent show in Bengaluru, the crowd got quite competitive, upping their score (not always honestly), determined to beat him at his own game, laughs Anirban.

After more than a decade of shows where he has loosely worked off scripted material, “or at least had an idea” of what he was going to say, Cry Daddy with its lack of a defined structure, “felt as though I was giving away control to the audience.”

And yet, he says, “This is the most attentive way of building a stand up show, because the audience feel they are part of this game, and after a point, they want to beat me. Plus, with this version no two shows are ever alike; every show is fresh and different.”

Anirban Dasgupta is back in Bengaluru with Cry Daddy on October 19. Details on his Instagram handle



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