Urvi Majumdar, Rao Morusupalli
Urvi Majumdar spends her days teaching in a classroom; Rao Morusupalli studies the stars. This year, both step onto the stage at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, each testing whether their jokes hit.
In Miss!, Majumdar draws on the rhythms of the teacher-student dynamic, while Morusupalli’s Space Comedy launches audiences into the cosmos with his astrophysicist’s eye.
The performers are but two of over 30 Indian-origin artists bringing bold, electric energy and sharp wit to the lineup. They speak here with Indian Link, describing their careers in comedy so far, bringing fresh perspectives and new voices to the stage, reshaping what South Asian comedy looks like, one show at a time.
Clearly, neither arrived at comedy through a conventional path. For Majumdar, the shift from classroom to stage revealed unexpected parallels. “You never know who you’ll be in front of!” she laughed. For Morusupalli, a life spent gazing at the universe became material – proof that some stories are simply too vast not to share.
Both comedians know though, that none of it works without the audience. Rao is refreshingly candid about it. “The audience is very important, it’s one of the main reasons I do comedy,” he says. For him, the comedian’s job is to earn their trust, direct energy, and bring everyone on board for the ride. Without them, the spaceship splutters and comes crashing back down to Earth. Urvi Majumdar, Rao Morusupalli
Urvi knows the feeling well. Her show thrives on spontaneous crowd connection, going off on tangents that pull her audience somewhere unexpected. The energy in the room, she believes, is what makes the night a success. “The more energetic the audience, the better the experience for everyone,” she explains.
Staying relevant in the age of social media algorithms is a challenge most artists face, but these artists believe that a truly good joke doesn’t need to be relevant to land. Urvi sees the relentless churn of the news cycle as a double-edged sword. By the time a joke is written, the story has already moved on. “News of the moment fades quickly,” Urvi says, explaining why she avoids following trends.
By contrast, Rao believes in the timelessness of comedy – with some of our favourites like Mr. Bean and Monty Python coming to mind. He believes in letting the jokes age, and performing for the connection, not the relevance. Even when it bombs, he follows an advice he received – “to not think about it after 24 hours.”
Despite their different approaches, neither is chasing viral glory. Rao puts his faith in a well-crafted show over a perfectly timed crowd-work clip engineered for social media, saying that, “Written jokes are always stronger. An hour of crowd work can be fun, but a well-crafted show is much more impactful.” Urvi, meanwhile, ditches the tight script entirely in favour of something more alive and unpredictable, and when it doesn’t land, her greatest wish is for the audience to get amnesia the second she walks out the back door. Once, during a bit about potentially facing racist comments on a “curry bag” her parents had packed for her, a heckler decided it would be funny to shout out prices for selling her curries.
But when everything clicks, when the joke lands, the room erupts, and the connection is real, both describe the same feeling. “You feel less like a freak for thinking that way,” Urvi says. Rao puts it more succinctly, “Orgasmic.”
Whether it’s a classroom, a spaceship or a dimly lit comedy room, Urvi Majumdar and Rao Morusupalli are proof that the best stories come from the places you least expect.
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