Back in 2009 when Canvas Laugh Club opened up in Mumbai’s Palladium Mall, comedians had to follow one rule—only English sets. Over the years, that changed and comedians started performing in Hindi. And now, a decade-and-a-half later, standup is performed in almost every other Indian language in every other state and even globally. Back when standup comedy took its roots in Mumbai, it would have been hard to believe that an all-Odia lineup would perform in the city. But it happened on 18 October when Riten Pattnaik, Bishal Mohanty and Malaya Parida performed at The Habitat.

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But that’s not all Pattnaik and his friends are up to. They’re also hosting the third edition of the Odia Comedy Fest, the largest standup comedy show in Orissa, on 6 December. In addition to Pattnaik, Mohanty and Parida, comedians Shubham Kanungo, Chiranjib Nayak, KL Rahul and others will be part of the two shows. The festival has been put together by Komedy Countdown Odisha, a comedy production company in Odisha founded by Pattnaik.

We caught up with the brain behind the festival and the Odia comedy scene to know all about the festival, how it came into being and what you can expect at the show.

Can you tell us a little about your standup comedy journey?

So I was in Bengaluru looking for a job after completing my engineering. I did some work in digital marketing a couple of months and got the opportunity to go to Mumbai for an internship. I always wanted to go to Mumbai because I wanted to explore the open mic scene there. I had heard about it from my brother who used to stay there. I was a big fan of Biswa Kalyan Rath.

So I started going to watch live shows in the free time. I saw how open mics are run. What one has to do to get stage time. At the time, I used to make content in Odia and Sambalpuri on the internet. But at open mics I had to perform in Hindi only. I kept at it though. I remember I had also won one of the open mics that used to happen at Canvas Laugh Club. And then in 2020 once the pandemic hit us, I moved back to build the scene in Odisha. That’s when the journey actually began.

How did the Odia Comedy Fest and Komedy Countdown Odisha come into being?

When I was in Mumbai, I used to work for Komedy Countdown with Aditya Gundeti. We used to produce and curate shows. When I decided to move back to Odisha in 2020, Aditya told me start Komedy Countdown Odisha to produce shows in Bhubaneswar. So that’s when the idea was set into motion. Initially we conducted online open mics and then slowly started performing at clubs. There was no space for Odia comedians to perform in their language. We would go to Hindi shows and do some material there. But that didn’t always translate. So we started renting out clubs to put up Odia-only open mics and standup shows.

After doing that for three years, we saw that comedy festivals were on the rise in the country. That’s when we decided that we need something for the local comedians in Odisha who perform in the regional language. We wanted to give them a platform and a goal to work towards. That was mainly the idea behind the festival.

What were some of the challenges that you guys faced initially?

One of the bigger challenges was getting stage time to perform for slightly bigger audiences. Because the comedians who did come and perform in Odisha were Hindi or English-speaking comics. Naturally not everyone in their audience would understand Odia. So it took us much longer to develop material and realise which jokes are working. That was a big hurdle that we had to overcome.

What was the experience like performing at The Habitat?

That was a big moment because I think it was the first-ever Odia standup show happening in the city. We had put up two shows and were pleasantly surprised to see that over 80 people came out to watch us perform.

And the response was great too. The audience members who stayed back after the show to meet us told us that this show should happen regularly.

What do you have to say about the rise of regional standup comedy in the country?

It’s a result of comedians like us doing this constantly. It obviously couldn’t happen overnight. But it had to start somewhere. But it definitely opens up the stage for more people who are confident or can only think in their native language. But it’s all a gradual change, at least for the Odia comedy scene. Outside of Odisha we have only performed in Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. We want to tap into the Kolkata and Delhi scenes because a lot more Odia-speaking people stay there. And only if we take those bets will people become aware that this is happening. But the first goal is to make the scene bigger in Odisha.

It’s happening I feel. For example, when we first did the festival in 2023, roughly 400 people had shown up. For the second edition almost 600 people showed up. And this time around, we’re expecting 750 people.

What has it been like to put together this festival? What are some learnings?

This festival has shown us all the challenges that come up while trying to build a scene. For example, we had to first get people in Odisha itself interested in our material. The younger audience is more interested in watching comedians who are viral on the internet. So we had to figure out how to market our festival. It also helped that some clips by Odia comedians went viral on Instagram and now slowly we have the eyes on us.

The next challenge now is to cater to the slightly older audiences. We want to position standup as a family activity. That’s difficult to do because the perception is still that comedians say things that might be uncomfortable for a family to watch together. But that’s not really true. We do have some material that might be edgy or racy but overall we always try to put up a show that is as clean as possible. So yeah, theses are some things that we’ve learnt in the process of putting together this festival and building the comedy scene in Odisha.

You can get your tickets for the Odia Comedy Fest here.