East India Comedy (EIC) collective is on a six-city tour and will perform in Hyderabad this evening. The seven-member team will be on stage for the ‘EIC All-Stars’ tour, bringing to stage their popular EIC Outrage segment and EIC Vs. Bollywood.
“We like making money,” laughs Sorabh Pant, a prominent member of the team when we speak to him. As part of EIC and individually, he’s been travelling to different cities for back-to-back shows. “I’m not complaining at all,” he quips.
Sorabh Pant, Kunal Rao, Sapan Verma, Sahil Shah, Atul Khatri, Azeem Banatwala and Angad Singh Ranyal have a steady following with their comedy videos available online.
“For us, this is a good chance to travel to cities where we have a good fan base and perform live for the audience,” says Sorabh.
Earlier, the team used to tweak the content to suit different cities. Now, with a lot of their content available online and eliciting responses from across the country, they feel there is no necessity to tweak the content. Barring the introductions in each city, little else changes. “Our jokes used to be mostly Bombay centric at one time, not any more,” says Sorabh.
The show will have eight-10 minute stand-up acts by each of them. Look out for their popular EIC Outrage, which will comment on topical issues.
A Bollywood segment will have seven stand-up comedians dissecting this year’s misses. “We will touch upon issues that made headlines in 2016 — six issues in detail and 12 others briefly,” informs Sorabh.
Demonetisation, Uniform Civil Code, a debate between AAP, Congress and BJP, Godmen in India and the tendency to scream in debates… all these will be discussed.
“I’ve worked on Godmen in India for a long time. Other current topics like demonetisation get updated keeping with what’s happening. We find that generally the Bollywood segment is where we have a good time since people warm up to it easily,” says Sorabh.
Through group gags and individually, they hope to bring the house down. Ahead of the tour, the seven worked together to arrive at a well thought out plan. “I’ve been in the comedy business for nine years now. Beyond grabbing eyeballs, in the larger scheme of things, I address different issues through my videos every two weeks,” says Sorabh.
‘Raees’ Vs MNS
His recent video was a hard-hitting comment on Raj Thackeray and MNS in the wake of Shah Rukh Khan meeting the political leader to assure that Mahira Khan will not be in India to promote Raees .
In the video, Sorabh emphatically states, “I wasn’t planning on watching it (the film). But now I really want to because if fake patriots and religious groups are offended by this movie, they must be doing something right”.
(East India Company will perform at Marriot Hotel, Tank Bund Road, December 16, 6.30 p.m. Duration: 2hrs 15 minutes. Tickets on bookmyshow and at the venue.)
