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Are entertainment diners again ready for a roast?
Updated On: 09 June, 2024 07:51 AM IST | Mumbai | Manik Sharma
Roast spelt trouble, we thought, until Aashish Solanki decided to give the controversial genre a new lease of life
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Ashish Solanki
The history of roast comedy, in India at least, is blotted by ignominy and outrage. Naturally, when comedian Aashish Solanki decided to give the format a new lease of life, the first reaction from within his fraternity was hesitance. “Nobody really has a good memory of roast comedy,” he says. Solanki is of course, referring to the infamous AlB (All India Bakhchod) roast featuring Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor, back in 2015, that relocated Indian comedy to a place from where rewards and risks have continually remained unprecedented. Roast comedy has since been whispered across corridors, held but rarely heralded, enacted but scarcely exhibited at scale. Solanki’s The Pretty Good Roast Show hopes to offer proof that the tide has changed. About that, the show has been both right and wrong.
Solanki grew up in North Delhi, something his comedy embodies through both shape and tone. “I grew up not knowing what I wanted to do. When someone said MBA, I went for it. When someone said something else, I tried it out. But when people like Zakir Khan and AIB starting going viral, I had this feeling that I could give it [comedy] a shot,” he says. Like most comedians working in what is possibly the most exciting yet unpredictable artistic space in India, Solanki discovered his knack for a punchline, in front of his friends. “The stage is completely different. Between friends, everyone knows the context, the personalities. But on stage, there is this surreal lack of familiarity. It’s possibly the biggest hurdle a comedian has to face,” he explains. The only method to doing comedy is to demolish your ego. “There is no learning school for comedy, except the school of bombing and failure.”
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