Mediatisation, digital spaces and live performance: Understanding Indian stand-up comedy and evolving performance landscapes

Abstract

This paper is a reflection on the points of convergence between live performance and the media within Indian stand-up comedy. Traditionally, live performance has been seen in opposition to the media. While the former is defined by spatial and temporal co-presence of the audience and spectators, the latter has neither (Auslander, 2012). While stand-up comedy is primarily live, digital and mass media are used extensively by comedians to build a professional reputation for themselves through their presence and participation on social media. However, after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, much of performance art – including stand-up comedy – has moved online. That is, comedians are experimenting with the online media: Zoom, Instagram Live, Facebook Live and so on, to put up live performances that would otherwise have been performed within a comedy club or café. This paper derives its theoretical basis from Philip Auslander’s postulation of liveness in a mediatised culture and digital liveness which ‘results from our conscious act of grasping virtual entities as live in response to the claims [technology makes] on us’ (2012: 13). The paper attempts a theoretical reflection on how to ‘read’ a stand-up comedy performance for pedagogical purposes in these different contexts as the idea of liveness, mediatisation and our experience of the live evolves with time and context.