Bengal, and Kolkata, has a rich heritage of comedy. From stalwarts like Bhanu-Jahor and Tulsi Chakraborty to Santosh Dutta and Utpal Dutt in films, and characters like Tenida, Bantul, Handa Bhonda and Nonte Fonte in literature.
When it comes to modern-day stand-up comedy, however, Kolkata has been missing a platform for city-bred artistes to showcase their game. Calcutta Comedy Company (CCC) is here to fill that gap.
Blasting off Chhoti Diwali celebrations with a packed house on October 23, the 32-seater venue opened its doors with a show that saw city-bred comic Vaibhav Sethia perform alongside some of Kolkata’s funniest people.
How the seeds were sown
Chief comedy officer at Calcutta Comedy Company Anyaman Majumdar and (right) owner of CCC Sukrit Poddar TT Archives
The idea behind CCC is to preserve the founding ethos of Kolkata’s comedy scene, and build on it. Anyaman Majumdar, chief comedy officer of Calcutta Comedy Company, recounts how the seeds were sown since before 2015, when he started his stand-up journey. “The Chaiwala hosted one of the first major open mics in Kolkata. Most of the city’s OG comics including Anirban Dasgupta, Sourav Ghosh and Vaibhav started their journey there. Sukrit Poddar (CCC founder and owner of The Chaiwala) and I always wanted to start a dedicated comedy club, but problems like funds, availability, and comics migrating from the city kept it from happening. This year, Sukrit and I finally sat together, chalked out a plan, selected a place and decided to start,” says Majumdar.
In a lot of ways, CCC has evolved from the open mics organised at The Chaiwala. In fact, the comedy club is located at Tollygunge’s NSC Bose Road, right beside The Chaiwala. “We have five shows across Friday-Saturday-Sunday, translating to 20 shows every month,” explains Majumdar.
Weekend laughs
The first show, on Fridays at 6pm, is Comedy Warm-Up, inspired by the Friday 6pm open mics at The Chaiwala. The next, on Saturdays at 4pm, is the Comedy Paanch Phoron. Named after the Bengali spice, and it will be a line-up with five comics. Saturdays will also have the Comedy T-20 at 7pm, where three comics will have 20-minute slots each to perform.
The last of the weekend shows on Sunday will kick off with Comedy Gen-Next at 4pm, which will give the stage to upcoming comics from the city, followed by the flagship show, Comedy Faceoff. On Sundays at 7 pm, four comics will battle it out with 15-minute bits. The winner is selected with the help of a ‘laugh umpire’— who is picked during the show — who considers criteria like laughter and applause. “All our shows are approximately an hour long, and priced reasonably with special discounts for students. We specially curate the line-ups with the best comics in the city including Rivu Ganguly, Ritabrata Dass and Abhinav Tewary,” says Majumdar.
The audience at the inaugural show on October 23 TT Archives
‘A great alternative to clubbing’
Moving forward, Majumdar has big plans for the 32-seater club. Apart from bringing some of the biggest names in comedy to the city to perform, he also wishes to incorporate more new shows next month. “We want to develop a dedicated comedy audience so that we can hopefully organise shows every day of the week. Apart from starting an afternoon open mic for absolute freshers, we also want to organise night shows, so going to a comedy club after dinner can become a great alternative to clubbing.”
The vision though, is very simple. “We want to become the one-stop destination for comedy lovers of Kolkata, be it people who want to perform comedy or watch it.”
