Papa CJ, Naked
Papa CJ once again recreated the instant bare naked comedy for his audience at the 4th Shillong Calm Festival, at U Soso Tham Auditorium Shillong.
It was not just the usual humor he has been practicing for the last 10 years. In his usual style, he recreated the erotic paradox of acceptance in India. He showed his vulnerability and triumphs on stage.
A Papa CJ’s show doesn’t lie just in the front row, which usually consist of the brave and the innocent. A husband and wife sitting apart or a young couple in their twenties being called to come and join and sit right in front. It seems his audience is always longing to be whipped.
His ability seems to be in knowing where to stop and leave his audience with various facial expressions. It is his ability to involve the back row audiences to be a part in his tongue and cheek commentary. With his eyes he feeds on those affectionate emotions. That’s why the audience laughs. He lives within his audience to make them realize that in every adversity, one does need to stay positive and laugh out loud. When his hour and a half long segment ended, there was a sea of warm, intimate love.
How do you feel when you recreate laughter and happiness in lives of people and make them realize their potential?
This show was all about human experiences that we have been through. Every single person at some point thinks I am talking about their lives. This is a show, when people walked out it is what do they feel. Do they feel overwhelmed walking out smiling or crying? While some people walk out thinking that they need to change their life and can do it.
For me, it is a very important aspect of the show, the soul. For a lot of people it is more real than anything they have ever seen before. Nobody has the guts to bare his soul like this. Naked beyond anything else. The audience can relate to it and see it.
Your show does not fit into any standup comedy routine; it’s like watching the Iliad?
This show can’t fit into a genre. It is stand-up comedy, theatre, and storytelling. It’s a reflection of life.
How important is it in finding that balance in being able to convey it as interesting and entertaining?
People have come to watch a comedian, they want to be entertained. Yet there are things that I talk that make people cry and being able to talk about difficult things and make it entertaining is interesting. However, you can’t trivialize it, upon the depths of the emotions of what you felt. That balance of being able to convey to make it entertaining and interesting is to see and embrace the emotional fluctuations of life. To find the positive and move on.
You are able to break away a lot of stigma and barriers, what according to you is ego?
It is different for a lot of people. On stage I am required to be on the limelight. Off stage I am happy. In India, strange thing is that standup comedy is so new. Someone takes your photo and stick it up on their publication. You are a celebrity.
No, a comedian is anti-thesis of a celebrity. If I get on stage, I need to relate with the audience and be down to earth. That is critical.
This show can be taken as a motivational talk. It gives a very different perspective of life. How true is that?
I am not here to tell the audience what to take with them. It is the audience to decide what they should take with them after the show. Each person will take something different and how do they want to relate to it. I am here, the audience will watch this and decide what they want from it.
In comedy there is a lot of exploration with the imagination and curiosity of the self?
I get inspiration from a lot of people through their lives. I see my audience in being able to relate to me as a human being. I have put my heart and soul into the show. To take courage to be able to talk about these issues. You can’t hide yourself. You need to feel and see, it is an experience.
