On 24 March, a mob of Shiva Sena workers stormed into Mumbai comedy club The Habitat, and vandalised its premises, over a joke that was recorded by Kunal Kamra at the venue. The club had faced a similar problem in 2020 when MNS workers were up in arms about a joke made by Agrima Joshua at the establishment. Similarly, a venue in Dehradun had to cancel Maheep Singh’s show in June because a political party objected to his “vulgar comedy” and threatened the management with physical violence.
The Indian comedy landscape is more volatile than ever with law-enforcement and political figures disrupting operations, filing FIRs and cancelling shows. In light of such incidents, it’s natural for people to steer clear of this business. But comedian and producer Aakash Mehta and venue owner Waquar Rehman don’t believe in playing it safe. They’ve gone all in and set up three new comedy clubs in Mumbai, Pune and Ahmedabad under the name Backspace. They already have plans to expand to other cities.
The reason they’re willing to take this gamble is because the duo believes their skillsets complement each other immensely. Mehta has been a well-known comedian for over a decade with numerous standup specials to his name and founded the artist management and production company Lasoon Live. He understands the artists’ perspective and knows what issues they might face. Rehman first founded Backspace’s Thane branch in 2017 and has been running the venue successfully for the last 8 years—a milestone very few clubs in the country have managed to hit. He knows how to curate experiences that can bring in an audience and keep the doors open.
Rehman believes the secret to successfully running a comedy club is to keep the comics’ interests first. “I’ve always believed in servicing the artist before the customer because they’re the ones who are bringing in the people,” he told us at their Todi Mills branch in Mumbai that has a capacity of 120. “When I moved from a 35-seater room to a 75-seater in Thane, I incorporated all the feedback that I got from the comedians previously.” This attention to what the comics need is the major reason for Backspace Thane running smoothly, he told us.
While keeping the artists happy is a key component to a venue’s success, it’s necessary to bring in patrons to keep the business running. In a city like Mumbai where rents are sky-high and its easy to get buried under the overheads, Rehman and Mehta have managed to walk a difficult tightrope, keeping both sides happy with curated lineup shows, comedy shows in regional languages and other themed comedy nights.
“The clubs in this city are predatory in nature. People perform for free with the hopes of getting paid some day. But as a comedian I know exactly what it feels like.
– Aakash Mehta
Another major draw for the comedians, they believe, will be paying them for their performances. “The clubs in this city are predatory in nature,” Mehta told us. “People perform for free with the hopes of getting paid some day. But as a comedian I know exactly what it feels like. There are expenses like travel and food that they should be compensated for at the least. Which is why one of our main goals is to pay the comedians who come to perform on these lineups. We’re trying to bring back that culture of paying comedians so there’s some feasibility to the art form. And after running this for a couple of months, I feel most clubs should be able to pay comics. Otherwise, there’s some leakage somewhere.”
But for the duo to make good on that promise, they have to first bring in the comedians, which is currently a challenge. The space that Mehta and Rehman are functioning out of was previously a comedy club known as Broadway Blues. “The gear that they were running on previously was not up to the mark, systems weren’t in place, which is why comics are wary,” said Mehta. “We first need to change the perception of this space. It’s a new space that we’ve taken over. It’s also a challenge to convince people to come to Parel, I’m not going to lie. But that’s mainly because they haven’t seen the new room. As time passes and the audience starts rolling in comics will start to come.”
Adding to Mehta’s point, Rehman mentioned they had certain changes in mind that they chipping away at slowly—including a swanky green room, cooler decor and recording setups. But while they were oiling this clunky machine, the co-owners didn’t want to halt shows altogether. “That’s why we didn’t make a big noise about the club,” he said. “We want to implement those changes, bring the space up to our standards and then we’ll announce like a launch party of sorts. It’s also only once you start operations out of a club that you figure out that space’s specific challenges. So we’ll iron those out before making a big deal out of the space.”
While the duo had their work cut out for them in the Maximum City, they decided to up the stakes even further. They simultaneously opened doors to their Pune venue which has three rooms, with a capacity of 30, 65 and 185 respectively. And this month they’ve inaugurated their 110-seater Ahmedabad branch. That’s not all. They already have their eyes set on expanding to Nagpur and Hyderabad after they’ve run the existing rooms for a season.
“These are very virgin kind of spaces,” Mehta told us. “We just have to give the comedians and people a reason to keep coming back and hopefully we’re nailing that brief so far. Both the spaces are gorgeous. It’s just about keeping at it. Every city has its own set of challenges, we just have to figure out how to deal with them.”
The duo seems to be well-equipped to face any snags that might crop up though. Rehman tells us he was always drawn towards the behind-the-scenes workings of various shows. Growing up, he hit up gigs at Mumbai’s iconic venue Blue Frog and caught comedy shows by the likes of Vir Das, before deciding to take the plunge. He started off small, renting a space to put up various workshops and open mics in Thane. The watershed moment was when comedian Kautuk Srivastava managed to sell out a show at his venue.
“From that day onwards, I was like, this is something I should look into,” he told us. “And we started producing gigs for a bunch of comedians including Abhishek Upmanyu and Nishant Tanwar. We took studios, 120 seaters, 140 seaters and so on and started producing shows out there. Punit Pania helped us a lot initially.”
Rehman’s experience curating shows and experiences coupled with Mehta’s time within the industry as an artist and producer makes them a formidable force. “I think experience wise both of us know enough about the scene,” Mehta told us. “Even with my company Lasoon Live, I’ve done a fair bit of production but that was always filling a specific gap. With all this experience, now we know what these gaps can be. And running a club is all about making sure you’re pre-empting and plugging all these shortcomings at multiple levels.”
Barring these logistical problems, there is the very real danger of an angry mob vandalising your venue as mentioned earlier. But Mehta and Rehman are of the opinion that it only works in the venue’s favour the first couple of times. “In my opinion, you need to be broken four times for it to cost you,” Mehta laughed. “The first three times it just leads to publicity and more audience.” Jokes aside, the Backspace venues don’t have their logo in the backdrop and that’s by design. “We’re working on something that is uniquely this place but I don’t think I need to show it in a recording,” he said. “And most comedians inform up-front when they’re recording something risky. And if it’s risky, I don’t want my venue to be identified. It’s not worth the clicks.”
With Backspace, Mehta not only ticks off “owning a club” from his bucket list, but adds to the ecosystem that he has built with Lasoon Live. “Your artists need a playground where they can perform uninhibited,” said Mehta. “In that regard these spaces are very helpful.” Their vision is to get these venues on auto-pilot so the duo can focus on the digital and artist agency to offer a holistic experience to their artists.
There are a lot of moving pieces to this organism that Mehta and Rehman have created. And only time will tell if their conviction, passion and beliefs are strong enough to keep this ship afloat. But in the meantime, their attempt to bring about a change cannot be ignored. Like Mehta told us—If you run a club right and you run it passionately, it shapes the rest of the comedy scene too.
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