Ashish Shakya, Shreeja Chaturvedi and Tanmay Bhat will help aspiring comedians and comedy writers refine and improve their material at a ‘Punch Up Your Jokes’ workshop on 19 June to raise funds for COVID-19 relief. Organised by Nisha Kalra’s Art For Oxygen initiative, the workshop will feature the three comedians jamming with the audience and sharing key takeaways on how to identify a funny premise, how to work on a joke, and how to make sure it lands well.

“In a nutshell, you send us your jokes that you think need fixing and we’ll jam live and help you make them, and any other future jokes you write, better. It’s like being in a professional writing room, minus the endless Maggi and cocaine,” Ashish Shakya said on Instagram.

“The idea was a workshop but we didn’t know what,” Shakya told DeadAnt. “I had thought of this ‘fix my joke’ idea but never got around to doing it. I thought it would be cool and we should try it now,” he added.

The comedians will help the audience flesh out some half-baked jokes and ideas and give some valuable feedback during the live session. “When three comics start jamming on how they would make a joke funny, automatically you can understand how to improve your jokes as well,” Shakya told us. “The tips are the same for everyone, right? There will be critique, there will be joking around, there will be proper insights and at the end of it a little Q&A as well.”

Inspired by writer Satyanshu Singh’s fundraising workshops conducted last year, all the proceeds from this workshop will be donated to NGOs doing COVID-19 relief work. The tickets for this Zoom workshop are priced at Rs. 499 and people can choose which NGO they wish to donate to.