You better watch out for this rising comedian…
New York Comedy Festival has just ended and there have been some great shows. On Saturday we attended Hari Kondabolu’s show at the NYU Skirball Center. Hari has been known to talk about a lot of political and social justice issues through Twitter and his standup act and so we were excited to see what his set would be like for this show. Hari came out with a good energy and started off the show well. His standup style is something along the lines of extremely sarcastic with a dash of pessimism and a sprinkle of annoyance towards racism and bigotry in America. He came on stage saying he was going to perform some old material, some new material, and some brand new material. He followed with saying that you will be able to tell what the brand new material is.
Hari talked about topics such as the election to racism and even added in a few jokes that the typical college student might enjoy (hint, it was about dicks). Hari has the great ability of reading the crowd’s energy and feeding off of it. By using that, some jokes that even Hari admitted were solid 6/10 had the crowd laughing just from the way he commanded the crowd and delivered the joke. His dryness in his comedy really helps his material land, especially when he is talking about very political or social issues. With a sold out show, Hari went above and beyond expectations. Even when leaving the show, we overheard people quoting some of his material and laughing about what they just experienced. Hari is someone who is rising in the standup comedy world and he is someone everyone should be looking at.