‘I don’t need to watch MAFS – I watched everyone I know get married at first sight!” – Aarti Vincent

FOUR AND A HALF STARS: Back for its third year, Brown Women Comedy is bringing some much-needed colour to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival circuit.

The second performance hidden away in the aptly named Solidarity Hall in the Victorian Trades Hall Council building, features a changing line up of hilarious, self-proclaimed ‘brown’ women. The show is expertly hosted and produced by Daizy Mann, a comedian and our MC for the evening who confidently led us through a show that enjoyed a sold-out opening night.

The night was a breath of fresh air. South Asian women are so often relegated to the limiting roles of daughter, mother, wife, sister and friend. It was a joy to watch the women in the lineup comfortably slip into a different role than we are typically allowed to occupy – that of the jester, the class clown.

It was subversive and almost conspiratorial to be in a room with mostly brown women, laughing at the jokes from an entirely brown ensemble. The best comedians can turn mundane observations or experiences into the hyperbolic and absurd – and because of this, the experience of being a woman of colour seems to naturally lend itself to being funny. When you’re largely overlooked or invisible in the societies you live in, you have ample opportunity to observe, to reflect and to (thankfully) mock.

And, as most of the lineup made reference to, you also have a lot of trauma to unpack.

The best jokes of the evening subverted expectations in this sense – punchlines that were overtly sexual, crass, vulgar or even used bawdy physical comedy felt deliciously taboo and refreshing coming from a lineup of women who could be your fun aunty or sister.

There is a lot of content in South Asian humour that can seem overdone. For anyone who grew up listening to Russell Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Aziz Anzari and Mindy Kaling, jokes about your parents trying to marry you off, threatening to beat you, or trying to get a green card can feel pretty stale in 2024. The sets of early 2000s South Asian comedians also largely catered to a mixed audience, and those punchlines can feel like an affirmation to an image of South Asians that white people are familiar with.

There were moments in the Brown Women Comedy set that also felt catered to a white or mixed Australian audience – jokes about lamenting not being able to beat your kids in Western countries, seeking out a green card when dating or having a hard to pronounce name. This did sometimes feel dated and referenced uncomfortable or even harmful stereotypes.

This was largely overshadowed by the moments in the night that showed the full complexity of the brown woman experience – not wanting to have kids, accidentally coming out to your parents, and growing up in liberal countries where you were never given the sex talk. Yasmin Kassim sheepishly shared with us that she’s an only child, a joke which is immediately self-evident to a brown child of migrants who knows her parents will be devastated if she decided to become a comedian.

The intimate venue lent itself to these quiet but powerful moments where the brown women in the audience also laughed at what was unspoken, illustrating the comradery we have based on our shared experiences.

At one point in the set, Yasmin thanked everyone for being there – the brown women, the well-meaning white women, and the white men with a fetish for exotic women. She then pointedly smiled at a white man in the front row, asking how his night was going, to collusive belly laughs from the audience. This flip of power dynamics showed a hopeful future of comedy, free of lineups of predominantly white men who hate their wives and love punching down.   

Speaking with the comedians after the set revealed surprising back stories – many of the women were new to comedy or had begun performing later in life. It was a reminder that the changes in these spaces are recent but have the power to make the comedy at an almost 40-year festival feel new and exciting.

Brown Women Comedy has 10 more shows left for the festival, including four this weekend.

You can buy your tickets using the discount code ASACFriends.

Jess Mathew is a communications adviser and proud daughter of Indian migrants. In her free time, she loves to be out of the house enjoying one of the millions of festivals Melbourne has to offer. You can connect with her on Instagram at @mzmathew.