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Anuvab Pal

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Anuvab Pal (born 27 April 1976) is an Indian stand up comedian, screenwriter, playwright and novelist.[1][2][3] He is occasionally featured as a rotating co-host on Season 4 of the podcast The Bugle.

Anuvab Pal
Born (1976-04-27) 27 April 1976 (age 48)
Kolkata, India
NationalityIndian
Alma materLa Martiniere Calcutta
Ohio Wesleyan University
Occupation(s)Stand up comedian, screenwriter, playwright and novelist

Career

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Pal co-wrote the 2007 Indian comedy, Loins Of Punjab Presents,[4] with Manish Acharya which The New York Times called 'a witty musical comedy'.[5]

In 2009, his play, The President Is Coming, was made into a Bollywood film The President Is Coming made by producer Rohan Sippy.

As a stand-up comedian, Pal started out with the British Comedy Store when it opened in Mumbai in 2010 and has since toured across the nation with his one-man show, The Nation Wants To Know in Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Shillong, Bangalore, and Pune.[6][7]

His first play, Chaos Theory, a love story between two Indian professors, was written in New York City, and performed in various productions around the United States.[citation needed] The Los Angeles Times, while writing about the Artwallah Festival, a South Asian cultural festival where the play was performed in 2003, said "Pal's characters are professional immigrants whose questions may not be so much about economic survival as intellectual and spiritual survival."[8] The play received its first professional production in New York City in 2010 starring TV and film actor Rita Wolf, directed by Alexa Kelly and produced by The Pulse Ensemble Theatre.[citation needed]

The India production of the play happened in 2008 and starred TV and theatre actor Zafar Karachiwala and TV, film and theatre actor Anahita Oberoi directed by theatre director Rahul Da Cunha and produced by his Rage Productions.[citation needed]

In 2011, Pal was featured in a New York Times video, A Night At The Comedy Club. CNN Go, a travel website of CNN, mentioned him on a list of 20 Mumbai People To Watch.[9]

He was also interviewed in the BBC News segment titled Having A Laugh In India[10] and was, along with comedian and presenter Cyrus Broacha, the only Indian comedian on the popular BBC Radio 4 show Just A Minute with Nicholas Parsons.[11] That episode also featured famous British comedians Paul Merton and Marcus Brigstocke.

He contributes columns often to magazines like Time Out Mumbai. Three of his plays, Chaos Theory, The President Is Coming and 1 888 Dial India have been published as novels. He has also written a non fiction book on the Bollywood movie, Disco Dancer.[12][13][14]

Pal had his stand up special Alive At 40, featured on Amazon Prime.[15][16] In 2018, his eight-episode comedy Going Viral starring Kunaal Roy Kapur was also produced by Amazon Prime.[17][18]

In Feb 2018, Pal did his stand up special The Nation Wants To Know at Harvard Business School, as part of the Harvard South Asia Conference.[19]

In May 2018, Pal premiered his stand up special, The Empire, at London's Soho Theatre.[20] Followed by this, in August he made his debut at Edinburgh Festival Fringe with the same show which was met with good reception.[21]

In 2018, Pal appeared on four different shows for the BBC. He debuted on BBC's Fresh from the Fringe, performing highlights of his Edinburgh Festival show.[22] He made an appearance on BBC 2's Big Asian Stand Up as part of BBC's The British Asian Summer.[23] His two-part radio series with Andy Zaltzman titled Empire-ical Evidence, tracing the legacy of The Empire in London and Kolkata was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 2018.[24] In December 2018, Pal was invited by the BBC World Service Arts Hour to The Arts Hour New Year International Comedy Show.[25] He also appeared on QI, on the third episode of the 17th series, on the topic of "Quarrels".

In late summer 2018, Pal became the first Indian comedian to perform before a sell out crowd at the Lund Comedy Festival in Lund, Sweden. [26]

In 2019, he performed for the first time at the Melbourne Comedy Festival in a show titled Indian All-Star Comedy Showcase[27]

The Victoria and Albert Museum, V&A in London, did a permanent exhibit titled 'Laughing Matters: State Of The Nation' under the heading 'Cruel Brittannia'. It featured clippings and writings from Pal's stand up show 'The Empire'. [28]


In 2020, his long running podcast Our Last Week with Anuvab and Kunaal, also featuring Bollywood actor Kunaal Roy Kapur, produced by Audiomatic, was picked up by Spotify as a Spotify original exclusive for India. The Hindu newspaper, referring to the podcast, called the hosts "The Kings of nonsensical banter" [29][30] The podcast was also featured by NPR in a show titled Code Switch in August 2016. The segment was titled What's so funny about The Indian Accent? [31]

In 2020, Pal wrote a sitcom for Amazon Prime India directed by Rohan Sippy, with the pandemic as the backdrop. It was titled Wakaalat From Home and starred Sumeet Vyas, Kubbra Sait, Nidhi Singh and Gopal Datt. Indian Express in its review, called it "a must watch show". [32]

In 2020, he was also a panellist on the BBC Radio 4 show The News Quiz hosted by Andy Zaltzman [33]

In 2021, according to an article in The Guardian, the BBC announced that Pal's sitcom pilot titled Empire would feature as part of Festival Of Funny, on BBC Radio 2. Empire starred famous British actor, comedian, writer, presenter Stephen Fry. [34]


In 2022, post pandemic, Pal returned to the Soho Theatre with his Edinburgh show Democracy and Disco Dancing, which received a series of four-star reviews. Reviewers said the show was a "laugh a minute" and "hilariously absurd". [35]

He also appeared as a panellist in a number of BBC radio shows including The BBC Radio Scotland show The Good, The Bad and The Unexpected and Comedians Vs The News on BBC World Service.[36]

As an actor, he played Mr. Mukherjee in the Mira Nair directed A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth for BBC 1.[37][better source needed]

Chortle, the British comedy website, announced on 22 December 2021, that Anuvab Pal and Mark Watson would be part of a Soho Theatre line up of stand up comedy specials on Amazon Prime Video UK. Pal's show The Empire was recorded at the Soho Theatre in London in January 2021 for release on May 6, 2022.[38]

In June 2023, Broadway's The Roundabout Theatre Company in New York City, did a staged reading of Chaos Theory starring American-Indian actors Manu Narayan and Rita Wolf directed by Arpita Mukherjee as part of 2023 Refocus Projects.[39]

In September 2023, Pal was featured in a Sky History documentary titled "Why Does Everyone Hate The British Empire" hosted by comedian Al Murray.[40]

In a Daily Telegraph review of the show, Anita Singh, said Mr. Pal was 'witty' [41]

References

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  1. ^ "What does the nation want to know?". dnaindia.com. 5 December 2013. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  2. ^ "Funny Man Pal Leaves City With Laughter Aches". newindianexpress.com. Archived from the original on 14 October 2014. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  3. ^ "Anuvab Pal becomes the first stand-up comedian from India to sell out his NY tour: watch his hilarious performances". ibnlive.in.com. Archived from the original on 7 June 2014. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  4. ^ "Can history be a hoot?". livemint.com. 25 September 2014. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  5. ^ Lee, Nathan (11 September 2008). "Sociocultural Commentary...and Singing!". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  6. ^ Harris, Shayla. "A Night at the Comedy Club". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  7. ^ "Anuvab Pal gears up for first solo stand-up show". The Times of India. Archived from the original on 11 April 2014. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  8. ^ Cheng, Scarlet (26 June 2003). "Far away, so close". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  9. ^ "The Mumbai Hot List: 20 people to watch". cnn.com. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  10. ^ "Having a laugh in India". bbc.co.uk. 25 December 2009. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  11. ^ "Special - India Special 2". comedy.co.uk. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  12. ^ "All about BEST IN STAND-UP COMEDY: Neville Shah, Anuvab Pal, Kenny Sebastian". bluefrog.co.in. Archived from the original on 10 February 2014. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  13. ^ "Books by Anuvab Pal". Amazon. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  14. ^ "COLUMN - On 'Disco Dancer', 80s India and a kind of Bollywood now forgotten". Reuters. reuters.com. 21 January 2011. Archived from the original on 27 January 2011. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  15. ^ "Amazon Inks Groundbreaking Deal for 14 Indian Stand-Up Comedy Specials". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  16. ^ "Amazon Video Has Signed 14 Top Indian Stand-up Comics, Promises Zero Censorship". Huffington Post India. 19 January 2017. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  17. ^ "Biswa Kalyan Rath, Anuvab Pal among six comedians to star in Amazon Prime special". Firstpost. 23 September 2017. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  18. ^ "Going Viral review: Even Kunal Roy Kapur can't save this (non) comedy web series". Firstpost. 10 September 2017. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  19. ^ "Harward get some Indian laughs". Mid Day. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  20. ^ "Anuvab Pal: The Empire". Soho Theatre. Retrieved 10 January 2019.
  21. ^ "Anuvab Pal: Empire". Edinburgh Festival. 22 August 2018. Retrieved 10 January 2019.
  22. ^ Sorgenfrei, Carol Fisher (2006). "The Edinburgh International Festival, and: The Edinburgh Fringe Festival (review)". Theatre Journal. 58 (2): 320–324. doi:10.1353/tj.2006.0136. ISSN 1086-332X.
  23. ^ "BBC Two - The Big Asian Stand-Up, Episode 1". BBC. Retrieved 10 January 2019.
  24. ^ "BBC Radio 4 - Empire-ical Evidence". BBC. Retrieved 10 January 2019.
  25. ^ "BBC World Service - The Arts Hour, The New Year International Comedy Show, Comedian Anuvab Pal: The scam of the British Empire". BBC. Retrieved 10 January 2019.
  26. ^ Agrell, Alexander (29 August 2018). "Komiska kulturkrockar bearbetas av indisk humorstjärna". Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snällposten (in Swedish). Retrieved 20 February 2020.
  27. ^ "The Conversation Hour: Beverley O'Connor, Des Bishop, Anuvab Pal, Kaneez Surka, Naveen Richard". ABC. Australia. 18 April 2019. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  28. ^ "Comedian Anuvab Pal's The Empire makes its way to London's Victoria and Albert Museum". Bangalore Mirror Times Of India. India. 12 April 2019. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
  29. ^ STASSEN, MURRAY (18 May 2020). "SPOTIFY ADDS 12 NEW ORIGINAL PODCASTS IN INDIA AND INKS CONTENT PARTNERSHIPS WITH RADIO CITY, BIG FM, AND AAWAZ.COM". Music Business Worldwide.
  30. ^ Amiruddin, Zahra (16 September 2016). "Anuvab Pal and Kunaal Roy Kapurtake their podcast series live at thisyear's Cheer! Comedy Festival". The Hindu.
  31. ^ "What's So Funny About The Indian Accent?". Code Switch (Podcast). NPR.
  32. ^ Malik, Ektaa (11 September 2020). "Wakaalat From Home review: A must-watch show". Indian Express.
  33. ^ "The News Quiz". BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
  34. ^ Conlan, Tara (14 February 2021). "BBC aims to lift the Covid blues with festival of comedy". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
  35. ^ Chu, Deborah (22 August 2019). "Anuvab Pal: Democracy and Disco Dancing". Edinburgh Festival List. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
  36. ^ World Service, BBC (12 February 2022). "Season 3 with Celeste Ntuli and Anuvab Pal". Retrieved 20 February 2020.
  37. ^ "A Suitable Boy (TV Series)". 16 August 2020.
  38. ^ "Amazon specials for Mark Watson and Anuvab Pal". Chortle. 22 December 2021. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  39. ^ "Roundabout Announces 2023 Refocus Project Lineup". 1 May 2023. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  40. ^ Jesop, Vicky (23 October 2023). "Al Murray on his new show about the British Empire:'In the culture war I'm a conscientious objector'". Evening Standard. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  41. ^ Singh, Anita (23 October 2023). "Al Murray: Why Does Everyone Hate the British Empire? review: while we hand-wring, India moves on". Retrieved 1 January 2024.
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