Nine comedy aspirants participated in the anniversary open mic held on the 24th of march. That marks 5 years since the city started regular comedy shows and open mic. The winner of this annual open mic receives a cash prize of INR 10,000. “It has been 5 years already?” said Yashwardhan Choudhary, the organizer, and host of the competition.

“The competition aims to provide a platform to comedy aspirants of the city and encourage them to do their best, the cash prize is, of course, a good motivation too” adds Yashwardhan.

The first open cash prize open mic was held at one of the local cafes of the city and has become an annual tradition for the city’s comedians. This year the open mic was hosted as a sold-out show at Bouffage comedy club. From hosting open mics at cafes to the city’s own comedy club the comedy scene of the city has come a long way.

The competition featured Yashwardhan as the host and 9 performers who were given 4 minutes each to perform and make an impression on the audience who was also the judge of the show.

“In the end, a comedian performs for the audience, so I think they are the best judge to decide the winner”. The audience was asked to vote for their favorite 2 performers. The top two were to face each other in a 2-minute joke-off based on which audience had to decide the final winner.

Deepak Singh with his unique delivery and twisted sense of humor won the competition by a landslide audience vote of 97%. “It feels really good to be acknowledged by the audience and the cash prize is cherry on the top,” says the winner Deepak Singh.

“We were not able to do this for the last two years because of the pandemic. It feels great to finally do it and the overwhelming response we got from the audience was just the boost we needed for the live comedy scene” added Yashwardhan Choudhary.