Friday, December 5, 2008
A college student from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will be performing stand-up for students on campus this weekend.
The KU South Asian Student Association, or SASA, has invited comedian Prashanth Venkataramanujam, or Venkat for short, to perform Saturday at Woodruff Auditorium.
Prashanth Venkataramanujam will perform his comedy routine at 8 p.m. Saturday in Woodruff Auditorium. Venkataramanujam was invited to campus by the KU South Asian Student Association, or SASA.
Seema Amin, Shawnee senior and SASA president, said the group first heard about Venkataramanujam after attending a 15-minute act at the University of Missouri last spring.
“What’s unique about him, first of all, is that he is Indian,” Amin said. “Not many comedians out there that are Indian are well known.”
Amin said that because Venkataramanujam performed his skits in English and made a few jokes about the Indian culture, he inspired SASA to invite the college student to perform at the University.
Venkataramanujam’s act on Saturday will be filmed and sent to Comedy Central. The comedian said he and members of his group called “The Brown Man Group,” were currently working on pieces to put together for a spot on Comedy Central.
Venkataramanujam is a senior majoring in neuroscience and said stand-up took a lot of hard work and effort and also took a lot of time away from his schoolwork.
“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do my first two years of college, at all,” he said. “Of course my parents wanted me to do medicine or dentist school.”
Venkataramanujam said the neuroscience major fell in his lap because of the credits he’d acquired toward the major, but ultimately, his passion was acting and stand-up.
One thing about Venkataramanujam’s comedy act that he emphasizes is that you don’t have to be Indian or Asian to enjoy it.
“I’m Indian, but I don’t think I’m an Indian comedian,” he said. “I’m just a comedian that happens to be Indian.”
Venkataranmaujam was raised in Chicago and his parents are originally from India. He said most of his act consisted of capitalizing on the differences between American and Indian culture, but also dealt with parents.
“Some of my jokes deal with the quirkiness of my parents’ personalities,” he said. “Parents are just weird sometimes.”
The college-aged comedian also finds it easier to perform for student audiences, considering he is still similar to them in age, workload and stress.
“Performing for college students, for me, is just like performing for your friends all the time,” Venkataramanujam said.
The comedian has been performing for the last five years, all while juggling classes, exams and papers.
The hardest thing for Venkataramanujam as a comedian and a college student isn’t the work load, he said, but the balance between the two and writing material at the same time. He said finding his own personality as a comedian was tough, and because he was just starting out he hadn’t found a topic that audiences were paying to see him for.
“Which is why the shows are free,” he laughed.
One other reason the show was free, he said, was because he’s a student and he understands finances with students.
“I don’t like to charge students partially because I’m a student and I don’t have money,” he said.
He gets paid for travel and a little more on top for food along the way, but for the most part, that was it. He said if he charged students it would be like charging his friends.
Sumeet Patel, Topeka senior and treasurer of SASA, said that before the performance on Saturday, SASA would pass around a donations can for the bombings in Mumbai, India.
“Some members of SASA could be affected,” he said. “Many of our group members have family there.”
After the event SASA will keep the donations can open for anyone in their office on the fourth floor of the Kansas Union. Venkataramanujam will perform at 8 p.m. Dec. 6 in Woodruff Auditorium on the fourth floor of the Union.
— — Edited by Kelsey Hayes
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