Growing up in Chicago, Raza Jafri always believed that he lived in the comedy promised land. The storied training ground of the likes of Bill Murray, Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert was the backdrop for his dream of wielding a microphone in front of enraptured crowds.
But just as his stand-up career was beginning to gather momentum, in 2020, the pandemic turned the city’s many stages dark. Within a year, while clubs in his hometown remained shuttered, Jafri had packed his things and headed to Austin, Texas, where rumor had it that live comedy was still viable.
Jafri wasn’t the only comedian to hear this gospel. Strengthened by the prohibition of live performances in some states, many of them blue, during lockdowns, the city has since lured prominent, if politically polarizing, comedians and podcasters like Joe Rogan, Shane Gillis and Tony Hinchcliffe. And in the past five years, more than half a dozen new comedy clubs have opened, including the Creek and the Cave, Black Rabbit Comedy, the Vulcan Gas Company, Rozco’s and East Austin Comedy Club — an intimate, 80-seat, velvet-curtain theater co-owned by Jafri.
Far from the dominion of rivals on either coast, the city has developed the capacity for an unusually expansive range of creative and political expression.
“It’s fair to have critiques of different elements within the scene,” Jafri said. “But it’s impossible to say with a straight face that it hasn’t created something really interesting and special.”
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The post In Austin, a Comedy Scene that Speaks to Political Mavericks appeared first on New York Times.
