An interview with Arzoo Malhotra, Dubai’s “Unladylike” comedienne

I loved the medium from a very young age. I used to love watching the short stand-up clips available on YouTube as a kid. I think what really cemented my love for stand-up though was an experience I had when I was 13-years old. I was at a summer camp in the New York and got really sick while I was there. I was ill and bedridden for weeks and my parents just wanted to make me feel better. So they took me to a comedy club and I was blown away by the performers. It was a low-key open mic night, but still, I just remember having the best time. I think since then I’ve associated stand-up comedy with feeling better.

I had been wanting to try stand-up for years before I got around to it. I just kept putting it off and saying I would give it a go “someday”. Then, a little over two years ago, I was in graduate school. I loved my program but I was just exhausted by the workload. I needed to get out of the head space I was in and try something different. So I figured maybe this would be the moment to give comedy a try. I went with a couple of friends to an amateur comedy night and met some lovely comedians who were really helpful and supportive and gave me the confidence to get on stage. I did my first show in May of 2017 and have not stopped performing since.

There are so many it’s very hard to just name a few. There are incredible comedians around the world doing really interesting and admirable things with their craft. I could talk for hours about how incredible Ali Wong and Dave Chappelle’s specials were, how good of a writer John Mulaney is, how brave Daniel Fernades is for tackling the kind of material he does in his shows, how there is a wave of hilarious, smart, and feminist female comedians in India and I am living for them. But for me, if I have to the choose comedians that I really admire, it would have to be a few of the older generation of comedians who paved the way for the kind of diversity of voices you see in comedy today and really fought to make stand-up a space that has no boundaries on content. Those four would have to be Joan Rivers, Ellen DeGeneres, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin. To more, those four comedians, in their own ways, contributed so much to the art form, and I am ever grateful and in awe of how they managed to accomplish all that they did.

At this stage, a lot of my content is inspired by my own life experiences and the things I encounter in my day to day life. I think there is so much humor in our daily lives and I enjoy making fun of that. I also enjoy observational humor and I’m a big of satire. So I think my comedy is kind of a blend of what I have experienced but delivered in the styles of comedy that I enjoy watching the most.

Because comedy is lots of fun and laughing with friends is a great way to spend an evening 🙂 Also, the show I’ve written, “Unladylike,” is kind of my way of making fun of and tackling all these societal norms and expectations that make me, and so many other people, feel like we are not good enough. I think there’s a certain joy in sharing those experiences with other people and having a laugh about them together. At the end of the day, I’m really proud of this show that I’ve created and would love to share it with as many people as I can.

Oh my gosh I think my favorite thing is when audience members have super dramatic reactions to lines. I once told a true story about something really weird that happened to me on a date and I heard an audience member audibly gasp. It was a really baffling date experience for me when it happened in real life and it’s always nice to see audience members react in a way that shows that they totally understand where I’m coming from.

As a female stand-up comic, particularly one who doesn’t shy away from mature content and adult language, there have been quite a few instances after shows when people have come up to me and said things along the lines of “I don’t think ladies should make jokes like that” or “I don’t think women are funny”. These comments have come from both men and women, and are not limited to people from any particular background. After a few conversations like this, I started to notice a pattern. I realized that no matter what I did, in some people’s eyes, I would always be dismissed as unladylike. And that’s when the seed of this show was planted.

I am really excited about going to the Edinburgh Fringe this year. This is my first hour-long show and I am taking it too the city where I did my first ever stand-up gig. It feels kind of poetic. I’m going to be performing everyday from the 14th through the 25th of August in the Bottle Room at the Mash House at 11:30 AM.