Written by: Hala Syed
Posted on: June 06, 2018 | 
| 中文
The Khawatoons
No one can fault the energy or enthusiasm of the comedy troupe known as The Khawatoons. Even before the show started, they were passing out gifts from their generous sponsors. Similarly, no one would or should accuse them of being unfunny, as they are clearly talented: Faiza, Natalia and Amtul, being the obvious standouts on this particular night. Yet, for all its merits, ‘Meet da Heat,’ performed at Thotspot last Friday, felt a little lacking.
The house was beyond full when Beyonce’s “Run the World” began playing and Faiza Saleem introduced the Khawatoons as the first all-girls comedy troupe in the sub-continent. This is an achievement in itself, in an industry/country/world where women performers are rarely encouraged and often side lined. While it’s wonderful that aspiring female comedians have a platform, what they do with it is equally important. An all-women comedy troupe creates space for new perspectives, which shouldn’t be squandered away for an easy laugh, such as through age-old saas/bahu jokes.
The first game of the night, ‘Story, Story, Die,’ seemed designed to highlight the performer’s weaknesses. The Master of Ceremony (MC) points at actors standing in a line, who start a story based on audience suggestions. As the story develops, the conductor keeps the players off-balance by pointing randomly and quickly to different players, who are eliminated when they hesitate. The eliminated actor has to then enact a comic death, also based on audience suggestion. Unfortunately, the premise forces the audience to pay attention to mistakes and pauses, and I didn’t want to root for someone to lose. I truly wanted to be entertained by a funny story, which was never built up because people kept dying. Similarly, games like Pan Left, Pan Right and the Flashback game were charming, but moved too fast and switched performers too quickly. They seemed to be more about the performers being alert enough to say something, anything at all, rather than being particularly clever, funny or coherent.
The games that worked best were the longer ones, which gave these admittedly great performers something to stick their teeth into. ‘Director’s Cut,’ where performers behaved like two actors and a director shooting an advertisement was genuinely hilarious, and each reiteration brought out something new. The ‘Helping Hands’ game featured an “expert” on muslim showers, on the Aamir Liaqat show and managed some timely jibes. The best one was ‘Texts from Last Night,’ for which a brave audience member lent their phone. One performer was only allowed to use messages from this phone as dialogue, while their partner reacted and tried to make sense of the scene. The reactions of the actors, to the mysterious and slightly intimate nature of the texts, were nearly as good as the scene they created from it.
However, in the most problematic game, the performers asked for suggestions of a low-end and a high-end location. A game of this type seem predisposed to making fun of poor people. The suggestions used: Royal Wedding and Saylani Welfare Trust, somehow made it worse. The entire scene ended up being about how some people don’t have enough to eat, and wouldn’t it be funny if rich people talked like them. It was in bad taste which no amount of free brownies could fix.
To be fair, there were plenty of laughs and some real high points in the 90 minute set, but there were too many lulls and breaks in momentum, to call it an unqualified success. Perhaps it’s because comedy is subjective and generational, and I’ve never felt so old in a room before. Perhaps it was that the MC didn’t seem to have complete command of the audience. Perhaps it was the form itself that hindered the Khawatoons, since improvisation is notoriously difficult to master. ‘Meet Da Heat’ was a competent and entertaining show, but it was not memorable. Since the Khawatoons have the potential to elevate and stretch the bounds of improvisational comedy, I’m hopeful that they will keep on getting better with subsequent shows.
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