Transcriber: Alen Essam Reviewer: Elisabeth Buffard
How are you guys doing?
First of all, how is everyone feeling? Good, awesome!
We've got a yuppie over here, so that's good.
OK, the title of my talk today is going to be "Haha, wait what?"
It is the title and it is also the number one response
when I tell anybody that I am a Saudi stand up comedian.
Audience: Ha ha !
Exactly...
(Laughter)
Another response I get is "what this standard comedy?"
This is usually because in Saudi,
comedy, stand up comedy to be more specific,
is a very new concept. It started end of 2008,
beginning of 2009, so it's still relatively new.
there is a newly found following for it
and the last common response I get is
"I thought Egyptians were the funny ones."
(Laughter)
But really the media kind of ignores the funny side to Saudis,
we're always angry, and you know, very serious,
announcements and stuff like that, but
I am here to prove this wrong. I was born and raised in Khobar,
on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia,
and I started comedy in theater
in middle school and high school, very humble beginnings,
also in summer camps as well and that was my first experience with comedy.
I also build most of my acting skills during that period of time.
And in 2002-2009, I joined a sponsorship program
by an oil company and I went to the university of Texas at Austin
to go to school there, and before that,
there is a little fun fact here,
before that, I'd never had access to my passport.
I'd never traveled alone,
and next thing I know, my dad is like:
"OK, get on the plane." "Where am I going?"
"America." "What?"
So it was a huge jump, I got...
culture shock was a big thing for me,
it was a big problem, it was interesting.
I was cooked up in my apartment for about a week,
I think I have watched too many action movies
so I thought everybody would have a gun
and things would be exploding and crumbling all over the place.
But I found out it wasn't that way at all.
And then a couple of semester go by and I become
one of the most socially active people on campus.
I joined every student organization I could lay my eyes.
It was like, Muslim students, yes! Bahay muslim students association, yes!
Iranian students association, yes!
It was like, video game association, yes! journalism...
I joined just for the sake of joining basically.
And this is where I got my first experience doing standup comedy
'cause I was interested in this whole thing.
I'd watched like a couple of standup comedy performances
and I thought, "Hey, I can do this too!" So during open mike nights,
there was one specifically by the Arab students association,
and I got on stage and I sucked, very bad.
Oh, it was a very awkward bunch of Arab Americans
and I'm there cracking blonde jokes
so it wasn't really working out very well.
And I had invited some of my friends for support.
Five people laughed, those were my friends.
So then, a friend of mine decided:
"hey, instead of just trying out standup comedy,
why don't you observe standup comedy,
why don't you go and see what they are doing first
before try it out yourself?"
OK, that's smart advice, so I did! I went to a bunch of local comedy clubs,
the Velveeta Room, Esther's Follies, in Austin, Texas,
but my real start was with the open mic night
at the Cap City Comedy Club.
They usually give beginners a slot of 3 to 10 minutes,
they give me 2. So they really didn't think I was gonna be that funny.
I got on stage and I remember,
one of things that I noticed about my jokes at first
they weren't representing me,
I was trying to cater too much to the audience,
I needed to be comfortable with my own identity
as a Saudi student at the University of Texas and also before I'd do anything.
So I did and I was, like,
"OK, I am a Saudi international student in America,
I'm sure that's funny at some point
So I got on stage and I was like, "hi, everyone, my name is Fahaad,
so I just wanna say that I am here, I'm a student at the university of Texas
at Austin, from Saudi Arabia. Shhh, I know!
And they started laughing right away! They got the joke,
it was post 9/11, it was funny at time! (Laughter)
So they were like, "ohh woow yeah" and it was a 2 to 3 minute set,
and it really went well. And I went back again
to the Cap City Comedy club a few times, before I graduated
in 2007 and I had to go back to work for the oil company that was sponsoring me.
At that point, I said, OK, that was cool
I did standup comedy, I can brag about that.
But that's about it, I'm never going to do standup comedy ever again.
Until a friend of mine told me, "Hey! You make this standup comedys,
you're funny right? There is this event in Bahrain."
and he send me a link on facebook.
See, here's where the social networking takes a part.
I got the notification on facebook, I checked out the page, oh my god!
it was Ahmed Ahmed and Maz Jobrani
performing live as part of their Axis of Evil Comedy tour in Bahrain!
And I though, "Wow! Maybe I should open for them."
And he was like, "Wait! What, how?! There are no auditions".
Er... you never know!
So I sent a facebook message to the admin of group,
and am like "oh, I would like to audition to be a opening act."
And he replies, "how did you know we had auditions?"
And I was like, "I don't know, I shot in the dark
and, you know, I was lucky."
So I went to an audition at Costa Coffee,
there were no real facilities for us to try our material,
and it was just, I'm there, outdoors,
they are sitting drinking coffee and I'm up there cracking jokes,
everybody looking at me like I'm crazy.
So they loved it, they loved my material, the fact that I was
the fact that I was drawing on my own background as a Saudi,
especially some jokes that were relating to the audience
as a part of the GCC and I was one of five opening acts in Bahrain.
That was in october 2008
and I was lucky enough to meet
and kind of learn from the experience of both international comedians.
And from there on, a friend of mine, currently a friend of mine
I met this guy called Khalid Khalifa, another guy who came to me
from the crowd in Bahrain and he was like,
"I am a Saudi standup comedian too!"
I was like, "Yeah, right. Yeah, like I'm gonna believe that!"
And he is like, "No, no! I'm trying to organize a show in Saudi."
"What?" "Yeah! Yeah!"
"OK, call me here's my number."
Right, I didn't wanna take part in organizing the whole thing
and I was a little worried about how it would be received in Saudi.
And a little on Riyadh because it is a very conservative city.
And little did i know that in February 2009,
I was performing in front of 1,200 people in the audience
in Riyadh with Ahmed Ahmed and a bunch of other local comedians
that I had no idea existed! And it was amazing,
since then we performed in over 25 comedy shows, since then in 2009.
And I also managed to take part in the Ammam standup comedy
festival competition in 2009. I was one out of 65 English-speaking comedians
to be chosen to take part; and I met two of my other idols :
Russell Peters and Gabriel Iglesias,
and it was cool and they were making fun of me, so that was cool,
they told me that I looked like Humpty from Digital Underground.
So anyway, that was the joke that I got out of the whole thing,
and also because of this, I got invited to take part
in the New York Arab-American comedy festival, May 2010.
They liked it so much they chose me
for the best of the fest night of that festival.
But that as far as standup comedy goes.
However I felt like I was neglecting a lot of my other creative paths
like writing, acting...
It's a natural transition for a stand up comedian to wanna do acting.
So I decided maybe I should start doing it, maybe I should start
working into getting into TV for example.
But the thing is, the Hollywood dream
is not really applicable in the region,
especially with the mega networks in Saudi Arabia.
A lot of stuff is done in house: the casting, the production,
the writing... you got to have a foot in the door.
And I was still contemplating and still doing comedy shows.
Then I decided, you know what? Screw this!
I'm gonna get on Youtube. I'm gonna do something on Youtube
And I was lucky enough to also do a tour of the GCC
doing stand up comedy and during these events,
during these comedy shows, I was performing with Gabriel Iglesias,
and it was all over the GCC as well! It was in Khobar, Riyadh, Dubia and Doha,
I managed to meet a very talented director, Ali Kalzmi,
who is based in Riyadh,
and he, then, introduced me to our current cameraman,
a very talented photographer, which is really interesting, Alaa Yousif,
also based in Riyadh as well.
He had never got into video before this.
So this was his very first experience
butone thing we got out of this is high definition.
He was obsessed with high definition, everything had to be HD.
So that was cool and it gave us the simplicity of the show
as well as the format of the show,
it really attracted a lot of people
and I had to recruit a fellow comedian Ibrahim Khairallah
as a writer on the team. I don't know if you guys saw him
but he was on Arabs Got Talent recently.
He is the voice behind the crocodile on the show
and also a co-writer of the show, and that is how "la yekther" was born,
La yekther is a Youtube channel we have been getting a lot of views,
we've been getting about 300,000 views on each of our videos at least,
and it's really cool, and we've only had like five episodes
and we are still getting major following from a lot of people.
We weren't the first comedy show that was based in Saudi to get on youtube,
"ala altayr" as well: Omer Hussein, a friend of mine as well,
was on youtube, he got there before we did actually,
and he was telling me that you don't have to be the first,
you just have to strive to be the best!
Which really, really got to me,
we are now friends and we are competing,
so that's cool, and we managed to get
the #1 most subscribed channel in Saudi Arabia
with over 25,000 subscribers
and after looking at other statistics,
I think it's one of the highest in the region,
i was really surprised at that,
and we have been getting approached by the TV,
the very people I was trying to contact at first. Woo!
So now we are having talks with a bunch of major networks in the region
to start some kind of comedy show, a little related tola yekthar
or the like. And I'm really hesitant at getting on TV,
and there is a reason because there is a whole new media movement.
And I've talked to a friend, a couple of friends of mine
in Google Middle-East North Africa
for some statistics to back my opinion.
Basically, la yakthar is in Arabic,
it's an Arabic-speaking show with English subtitles
And the reason a lot of people were saying: "why would you do that?
In English, it would probably be funnier? like other comedians on Youtube
Ray William Johnson... and you would get more fans that way."
I kind of doubt that because
the top search term in Saudi Arabia is 'youtube' in Arabic.
That's interesting also, 80% of Saudi queries on Google
are in Arabic, and Saudi Arabia is also the third in the world
when it comes to youtube mobile playbacks,
normal active population, it's number one:
they really like entertainment there.
Also the reason we use social media or social networking
to promote the show as well as opposed to advertising on TV
on TV or other form of traditional media
is that we have about 2.94 million facebook users in Saudi Arabia
and the website gets about 5,000 members everyday.
So that is a substantial amount of people to reach out to
and we've been getting 300,000 views each,
which is a kind of equivalent to when normal active population
to 7.32 million views, if we were in the United States
So that is pretty cool.
And other statistics that are related to youtube or internet vs TV in general
are there is this statistics or there is a study
that was done by an effective measurer group
in the Middle East and North Africa
it covered majorly Egypt and the GCC countries and
it shows that the internet retains a substantiatial audience
throughout the whole day when
traditional TV peeks in viewership at night or in the evening.
However E-mail and social networking
are the most popular online activities for the internet users
in the Middle East and North Africa,
and the last part, which is really interesting,
of the respondents, 88% say -- that is almost 90% right? --
say they access the internet daily,
only 71% said they watch TV everyday.
So to us, that is keeping us comfortable within the realm of youtube
but we are considering seriously moving into TV.
and what I want you guys to get out of this,
is if you think that you're funny enough, good enough,
you think you can produce contents that's good enough, get on youtube.
Get on youtube and trust me, people will notice,
people will reach out to you,
and the very same people you were trying so hard
to prove yourself to, will end up calling you and begging you to come.
So that also goes back to the concept of mind shift,
if you can you know put your mind to it, it can really happen.
Thank you very much, and that's it!
(Applause)