A comedy club will provide different comedy nights, a free night on Tuesday, a Mic Cheque on Thursday and a live show featuring one comedian. On Friday 21, the comedy club was launched in an exciting event.
Some of the stand-up co-medians share a light moment during the
launch. PHOTO/ANDREW KAGGWA
If you have heard even the slightest bit about the reality TV show Stand Up Uganda, then you likely have some idea of how the modern stand-up comedy scene has evolved. MultiChoice Africa courtesy of M-Net started a Pan African reality show, Stand Up. They created versions of the show such as Stand Zambia, Stand Up Nigeria, Stand Up Kenya and the Ugandan version, Stand Up Uganda.
At the time, Uganda had a burgeoning comedy scene thanks to the Amarula Family who had taken sketch comedy to the public, but what most of them were doing was in Luganda and mainly did acts in twos or threes. Amarula was a big part if not the face of Ugandan comedy in the late 1990s and the early 2000s; they were the only comedians with the licence to joke about almost anything and people took it lightly.
They made fun of the president, the Kampala mayor of the time and were the only comedians who had a performance slot at the peak of a concert; it wasn’t out of this world for Amooti Omubalanguzi or Paddy Bitama to take on the stage slightly before Jose Chameleone or after Bebe Cool to do a parody of Saida Kaloli, that’s how big Amarula Family was and is on the local comedy scene. But it was in the 2000s that stand up comedy as we know it today started taking shape, and this was thanks to Philip Luswata’s Theatre Factory. Then, Theatre Factory performed for food changing venues mainly because wherever they went, most of their patrons could hardly understand what they were trying to do…………………………………………..CONTINUE READING……………………………………….
