“Two years ago Tanmay and I came down and we did some videos for Tourism Victoria,” Joshi says. “So we just spent ten days going around all of Victoria. We did Melbourne, we did Phillip Island, we did a bunch of other places. This is going to be the first time any of us are doing comedy of any form in Australia. It’s going to be pretty interesting, but it’ll be fun.”
AIB have been presenting provocative live shows since early 2013. The four members had all performed stand-up comedy prior to banding together, as well as hosting various radio shows and podcasts. AIB’s major breakthrough came once they started utilising YouTube in late 2013. Their hugely-popular YouTube channel is a port of comedic activity, with regularly uploaded sketches and live clips, plus occasional social activism. A lot of the content is India-centric, so some alterations will be necessary to appeal to Australian audiences.
“We’re aware of the fact we’re going to have to be a bit more universal in the way we address things,” Joshi says, “but I think our approach is still going to be very much who we are and what we do. That said, there is something inherently funny in being in front of an audience that is 95% Indian and 5% non-Indian – occasionally you just see a look of complete bewilderment on the non-Indian faces that I almost crack up onstage. But that’s OK with maybe a few jokes, because that becomes funny for the audience as well, but you can’t do an entire show that way.”
Their material regularly casts a critical eye on social and cultural norms, religious presumptions and politics. But, even while it’s India-specific, it’s not inaccessible.
“We deal with some pretty universal emotions in our comedy,” says Joshi. “We did a video called Honest Indian Flights, and the video is actually in Hindi, but we subtitled it and we put it online and the weird thing is it’s one of our most viral videos ever. Weirdly enough it’s been featured on a breakfast show in Australia. What we realised once we put the video up is the experience of a shitty flight is universal, and it’s the same everywhere. It’s people getting up before they should, it’s the entitled drunk guy on the plane, it’s people trying to stuff the overhead cabin with shit knows what, it’s the guy who won’t stop checking out the flight attendant. That really managed to transcend any sort of cultural values, so the hope is to do that with our [live] comedy as well.”
Whatever the subject matter, when planning their next comedic target the aim is to find things with lasting relevance and mutual applicability.
“If you write exclusively topical material the thing that happens is: a) it gets old really fast, and b) you find that you are always writing. There’s never any time to take in new material and then hone it, which is something you can do with a more timeless observation. So we always aspire to write for broader themes than just what’s happening in the headlines right now.”
The four core AIB members – Joshi, Bhat, Gursimran Khamb and Ashish Shakya – are all coming to Australia, plus a fifth performer, Abish Mathew. The shows will encompass music, sketches and stand-up. “[Abish is] a frequent collaborator with us. He’s one of the funniest guys in India and we do a lot of work together. He’s as much a part of the team as any of us, it’s just that he’s too cool to be formally associated with us. So it’s going to be a nice mix of things, and something for everybody.”
Working as a four or five person group, with each member an established comedian in his own right, means there’s a wealth of ideas coming in. And rather than one individual holding the reins, the input of each member is valued.
“We’ve been writing collaboratively for over four years now, because we’ve been a group of four comedians for the longest time. We’ve done all of our writing collaboratively, so I think we’ve managed to do without stepping on anybody’s toes. And with Abish also we’ve collaborated so frequently that coordination is very easy and sort of an exchange of ideas.”
The material constituting AIB’s forthcoming Australian shows should be entirely new to local audiences, even those who are keen followers of the group’s online activities.
“The stuff that we do live is very, very different [to the stuff that we do in our videos]. I think it’d be cheating on some level to just re-present stuff that you’ve already done in another format and just bring that out live. Live comedy tends to have a very different cadence and a very different tempo and flow. So we try to keep them separate.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
