One Night Standup’s in the news

Thanks to the folks at the National.

• One Night Standup will continue to be a monthly free-to-the-public event. For more information, visit www.facebook.com/OneNight StandUp

The Emirati comedian Abdulla “Abz” Ali is not afraid to push boundaries in his stand-up comedy routines. His acts have a tendency to be at times racy and controversial, but he makes no apologies.

For the 21-year-old, it’s all in the name of entertainment.

“Comedy is an art and art should never be censored,” said the Dubai native. “My comedy style is really just an exaggeration of my personality.”

Ali was speaking ahead of the debut comedy eventOne Night Standup in Dubai Monday night, at 8pm, at 1Up, Boutique 7 Hotel and Suites, Tecom.

Hisham Wyne, a Dubai-based columnist and writer, founded the event, aiming to enhance the UAE comedy scene and give the audience an opportunity to enjoy local talent free of charge.

“My interest in stand-up is a progression of an appreciation for the community and my public-speaking background,” said the 28-year-old Wyne, who is originally from Pakistan. “I felt there should be more opportunities and places for people to perform, so I did something about it.”

The interest he received was overwhelming and performance slots filled quickly.

“We want to encourage comedy and self-expression, but we don’t want people to get offended,” he said. “After all, they are showing up to have a laugh.”

While their current venue is an intimate space, Wyne hopes it will encourage more establishments to open their doors in support. He also hopes to catapult the careers of comedians, similar to how many Hollywood actors started out in small clubs and bars in the US.

“The issue of finding a venue is huge here because there are quite a few barriers. Our event will hopefully set precedence for others to curate their own events,” he said.

Ali, who is currently studying dentistry in New Zealand, shares the same sentiment and stresses the need for more support. He looks up to comedians such as Dave Chappelle, after watching one of his shows at age 13.

“I would love to see the UAE as the capital of comedy in the Middle East,” he said. “Feedback is mainly positive, but sometimes I do get the odd question of ‘Why are you doing this?’ or ‘You shouldn’t have said that’. It used to make me sad, but I learnt to live with it.”

The Egyptian-born stand-up comedian Lamya Tawfik has also had to face some tough criticism. As a 35-year-old Muslim woman who wears the hijab, some found it difficult to understand her love of the stage.

“I was on an Arabic talk show once and one of the hosts said to me: ‘You wear the headscarf, shouldn’t you not be drawing attention to yourself?’ I simply said: ‘Hey, I’m just doing comedy.’ Besides, it was ironic because her co-host also covers her hair, yet she’s on TV.”

Without intending it, Tawfik, who was also juggling a doctorate in children’s media with a job in advertising and developing her comedy, found herself responsible for exemplifying that one can be a practising Muslim and do comedy at the same time.

“We are always concerned about being politically correct and not offending each other. We don’t push the envelope in fear of being attacked,” she said. “My humour is observational and I tend to make fun of myself a lot. It’s pretty family-friendly, like Bill Cosby.”

Both Tawfik and Ali decided to pursue comedy after attending a 2009 workshop in Dubai by Aron Kader, from the Arab-American comedy group Axis of Evil.

Wyne stresses that comedy is undeniably difficult and therefore requires dedication.

“I chose this particular venue because the audience won’t be easy to please, which makes it more challenging for the comedian,” he said. “But at the same time, I’m not throwing them to the wolves. They have to come with a game plan and know their material inside out because they are here to entertain.”

 

Graffiti…

 

This is very cool. Lots of people, including the erstwhile staff at local English daily The National, have run stories on the graffiti and street art scene in Dubai. It can’t hold a candle to other places in the world, but the fact that it remains a jail-worthy – and worse, a deportation-worthy- act, means it remains the preserve of a few brave souls. Many of the graffiti artists in the Satwa and Al Badaa areas are Emirati. They can’t be told go back home if caught.

But not this one. S/he is one of the pioneers of scene, and the vast majority of his works in Dubai South. Tecom, JLT, Media City, etc., remain popular haunts for him/her. Not only is this soul dedicated to elliptical statements marked with the triangular A, but has a knack for encompassing the idiosyncrasies of the city we live in using but a few choice hastily-painted works. What makes his/her work compelling to me on a personal level is that I’m aware of the person behind the spray can, and read their careful scrawls as an annonymous extension of their personality.

Sirius, of course, is the brightest star in the sky,derived from the Greek ‘Seirios’. Its close proximity to Earth, added to a size twice that of our modest sun, makes it a prominent feature of the nightscape. And isn’t everyone in Dubai trying to aim for the brightest, blingiest star out there, regardless of cost or sanity?

Ps: The picture was taken near the entrance to the long standing, practically forgotten, almost derelict, Dubai Desert Springs community next to Tecom. 

The human capacity to make beautiful noise…

The power of human creativity. Or rather, the ability of humans to make noise. No matter the situation, or the tools to hand. This was spotted by @mahreenkasana on twitter. Give a man a glass of brandy, he’ll sing for a day. Teach him how to make brandy glasses sing, and ahhh…music. Observe:

Severely brilliant and annonymous

Image from Central Station, linked below

This came to my attention recently, through my twitter timeline – and I utterly fail to recollect who it was, else they’d get deserving mention. Utterly superb. Paper sculptures, intricately hewed out of books. And left annonymously at libraries, bookshops, etc, in Edinburgh. With personalised notes indicating appreciation for the work these institutions were doing. E.g. “A gift in support of libraries, books, words, ideas….. (& against their exit)”

No nom de guerre, no subterfuge. Just two XXs indicating hugs.

This harkens to a bygone era, where flair and discretion could make comfortable bedfellows, and cheap publicity was not the norm. Of course, as I say this, 2012 might just be the year the paper sculptor reveals herself and starts marketing her wares. And perhaps such talent does deserve some recognition and monetary compense. But I wouldn’t like it. Her work would lose its mysterious elegance, and aura of Valentine blooms delivered out of season, unexpectedly.

Read the rest here.

There’s also a Guardian article about it, from March 3rd 2011.

Now isn’t that just magnificent?

 

 

So Artsy, So Culturey, so New Yearsy

Yes, t’is that time of year. When tired old 2011 trots out with head bowed and beard tripping up knobbly knees. On the other side, 2012 will probably behave in the manner of all newborns: kicking, screaming, temperamental, and as full of smiles as poop.

So Dubai, you think you’ve got New Year‘s nailed eh? The parties, the booze? Abu Dhabi, you’ve got Coldplay. Well, I see you both, and raise you: giant sculptures of Hell Boy and the Hulk in Eucador.

There, they construct large combustible sculptures of everyone’s favourites – from smurfs and the Cat Lair, to a large green Hulk. And then set them aflame and welcome in the turning of time.

Check them out here, as first tweeted by the awesome @Moonbootica. Always awesome to see how people everywhere celebrate the approach of a new set of 575,600 minutes in ways beautiful and quirky.

A haven for the arts

 

 

Tsk tsk tsk. Over a month without an update. Terrible of me, really. But there’s sometimes a distinction to be made between writing and doing – and the past month has been all about the Doing. First there was the Abu Dhabi Film Festival – which I covered for GN (over at hishamwyne.com). Then worked with the awesome gals at Art in the City for Abu Dhabi Art. From there, rolled right into DIPAF – the Dubai International Performing Arts Festival where I did my first stand up comedy gig and poetry in Urdu the next day. All this merits a blog post of its own – and this will happen. I just need to start stealing pictures from miscellaneous FB profiles for that one. But in the meantime, here’s an article I wrote on the arts scene in Barsha. 

 

Let’s assume for a second that you’re homing in on Barsha on the back of a giant bird. From afar, you see a cross-section of living and shopping spaces, with apartments and villas rubbing corners with little shops, restaurants, and hypermarkets. The Mall of the Emirates, with its protruding ski slope, slides into view as retail lynchpin.

Hover a bit closer and you realize Barsha is a community humming and bustling in its own right. People mill around, cars honk and there are the inevitable traffic jams. From your perch in the sky, you linger over busy street corners. Just a few turns away, villas sit slouching in the very epitome of languor.

As a strictly amateur thespian, comedian, and general noisemaker, I find the arts scene in Barsha figuring ever more prominently within my schedule. And that’s largely due to two enterprises: DUCTAC and the Jam Jar.

Nestled in the Mall of the Emirates, the DUCTAC theatre is home to an artsy generality of people of all ages – some as tiny as kneecap-biting five or six. It offers lessons in music, comedy, tap dance, improv, writing and Arabic, and there is theatre space for all manner of performances. From little girls dressed in pink tutus to people carrying a menacing array of props and scripts, DUCTAC is home for everyone with even a fibre of interest in the arts. Within DUCTAC operate the indomitable duo of Ali Al Sayed and Mina Liccione, the founders of Dubomedy. Mina is an ex-Broadway tap queen and comedienne, and Ali a world-class purveyor of comedy in his own right. I’m currently dabbling in stand-up comedy classes with them, and thoroughly enjoying the bonhomie and camaraderie.

Then, if you were to gain some altitude, and look across to the other side of the Umm Suqeim road dividing Barsha from Al Quoz, you would see the Jam Jar hidden between rows of identical warehouses. Technically, it’s on the wrong side of the street to be considered Barsha. But its influence and proximity means it deserves honorary mention.

One of the true pioneers of Dubai’s homegrown arts scene, it caters to a wide variety of events- musical performances, theatre, and arts exhibitions. It’s a communal space that’s easily accessible, and the all-girl team is genuinely enthusiastic about arts and culture. The Jam Jar, in some manner or other, has been involved with many of the seminal arts and culture events in Dubai and even Abu Dhabi. I have memories of several happy evenings and afternoons there.

Between the Jam Jar and DUCTAC, Barsha’s denizens can rest assured there will always be artsy endeavors to soothe the soul.

Why I hate mixology – those molecular bas#ar%s can go to hell

Image via Wikipedia

It’s 3 in the morning. I’m relaxing. The week has been tough, what with traipsing up and down to the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Rewarding, but tough. I’m listening to music. And not classy music.

In point of fact, I’ve decided tonight is when I take a break from my standard jazz, blues and indie fare and sink into the world of autotuned fake Rnb. ‘Mr. Saxobeat’ has been played, as has ‘Put it down on me.’ A couple of detestable 50 cent songs have also been Youtubed. It’s just that kind of night. Not only have I typed incessantly the past week, I’ve also just finished Jason Webster‘s !Guerra, one of the better books I’ve read in 2011. Some mind numbing isn’t going amiss.

Except I can’t. I can’t take it. And I don’t know quite what’s wrong. Apart from the shit lyrics and the utter vacuousness, that is. Then it hits me. I miss the messiness. Of a plectrum singeing worn guitar strings on its way down. The inevitable plunk plunk that announces hand (and plectern) hitting string, announcing a certain honesty. I miss the beauty of the missed note in a live performance. The imperfection. The wabi sabi ethos. I miss the sax, the clarinet, the wind instruments so liable to be overblown to the point their pitch varies. I miss their complexity, their character.

Forget genre for a second. What modern music has done is taken notes, processed them using large iMacs with the latest I7 processors, and assembled them for optimum hearing. Singers’ voices have been purloined, cheese grated and reassembled into perfect robotic utopian tone. Never again will you hear the dying rasps of a diseased Johnny Cash trying to wring the last breath from his napalmed lungs to tell you about the American dream. Or any dream. No, it’s just perfect mollecules of !ucking perfect !ucking sound. And their perfection bleeds away all character till its muzak not music. Music is spontaneity, and joy. Muzak is just a formula. So go to hell Gaga Bieber Black whathaveyou.

And that’s my problem with mixologists too. You’re going to deconstruct my G&T till it melds at molecular level? You’re going to freeze that little ball of cucumber essence in liquid nitrogen so it dissolves perfectly? Well, go have intercourse with a rabid baboon, Mr. mixologist.

See, I like my music imperfect, and I definitely like my drinks asymmetrical. In want my G&T to taste differently depending on which side of the glass I’m drinking. My whisky and lemon bitters is on a gradient of tangy, smooth and pungent depending on how I drink, what the base was, and how I’m sipping. Don’t give me your formulas. We’ve got actuarial tables for that. But no one goes to a goddammned jazz club to practice actuarial tables. Just Sayin’.

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