Pride month: Hyderabad’s queer comedians take centre stage

Hyderabad's Queer Women Collective (QWC) creates inclusive spaces for queer artistes to share stories through stand-up comedy.

Hyderabad’s cultural landscape is opening up to be inclusive of diverse storytelling. City-based Queer Women Collective (QWC) has been instrumental in setting the stage for queer artistes to share stories and talk about various topics, with a touch of humour.

QWC took off in May 2020 with an online event. “Queer women and non-binary folks went through a lot of pressure as people moved back to their hometowns during COVID. Going back to the family was not a great experience for everybody,” recalls QWC founder Apoorva Gupta, who found very few spaces for queer women to sit and talk.

The virtual meet-ups led to physical stand-up events and open mics. A little fun and jokes around their experiences lightened their hearts and made them feel a little safe. Stand-up sessions held at cafes and the two editions of Queer Indie Film & Lit Fest picked up pace over the year. “Stand-up comedy is also storytelling; making one feel connected, related, and still laugh about it,” says Apoorva, who narrates her coming-out, dating experiences, and more on stage.

It has been a year since Meherin, a therapist with Pause for Perspective, a mental health organisation performed as a comedian at their centre during Pride month. In a room of queer folks and allies, Meherin’s set also included their experiences as a therapist. “I’m a queer Muslim and a non-binary person; this perspective is effective in looking at oppression with a touch of humour,” they says.

K Vaishali, a technical writer , transforms into a stand-up artiste in the evenings, “I enjoy performing for the queer community,” says Vaishali who identifies as cis and lesbian.

Being a writer — her book Homeless: Growing up Lesbian and Dyslexic in India won the recent Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar — helps her look at life with a different lens; this perspective as well as her experience as a gamer inform her stand-up material. She might not be a serious comedian, but she goes outside her comfort zone to have fun and experiment.

Vaishali doesn’t need any filters when performing for the queer community; she can speak on whatever she thinks. “I don’t have to explain because the audience includes mostly queer or allies who understand the queer subculture. I can be as unhinged and unfiltered as everyone understands .” An example was the way she imagined the Sherlock Holmes series as a lesbian love story and made jokes about how everyone knows a lesbian who looks like the Sherlock Holmes character from the series and how most people even have an ex who behaves like the Sherlock character. “Many people, I think, related to that because I got a lot of laughs, but I could never translate this joke to a straight audience.”