Fahad Zone

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In the last couple of years, a new industry rose up in our closed and very sensitive society in Saudi Arabia, Stand up Comedy.

Couple of people tried and successfully managed to unofficially start this industry in Riyadh, Khobar and Jeddah.

At the beginning no one understood the concept of Stand up Comedy, and no one knew anything about these shows, and only few people attended them, also the comedians were not that famous.

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Now it’s different, thousands of people from both genders are attending, and more famous comedians are brought to perform live. Also more media coverage is noticed, whether newspapers (like Saudi Gazette and Arab News), TV channels (like Alarabiya) and much more.
We even have our first comedy series in Saudi Arabia ever, called “ALMOST” created by Todd Nims from AB Media and Ali Kalthami which will air soon (trailer below).

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Last month Luxury Events hosted a Stand up Comedy workshop at Prince Sultan University, the workshop was presented by the famous Palestinian / American comedians Dean Obeidallah and Aron Kader, and filmed by Rotana TV channel.

The workshop was the first one of its kind to be presented in Saudi Arabia (below you will find Rotana’s film plus the “behind the scenes” shots I’ve taken).

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All the credit for the emergence of this industry in Saudi Arabia goes to Peter H Lees and his friends. Peter is a British guy lives in Saudi Arabia, he created a production company called Smile Productions, this company is responsible for many successful Stand up comedy shows, performed by a very famous comedians such as Ahmed Ahmed, Maz Jobrani, Dean Edwards and more.

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For me, I’ve always liked Stand up Comedy, and I watch it regularly on TV. The first live Stand up Comedy show I’ve ever attended was the LOL comedy tour, which has been produced by Smile Productions, and I wrote a post about it last year.

Ever since, I started to check for any new shows, and buy their tickets as soon as they go for sale, I even dragged some of my friends and colleagues into some of them, and they loved the concept of this kind of entertainment.

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There is one issue facing this industry though, official support. There is no specified venue for these kind of shows, no official advertisement, no official support whatsoever, and the producers are having difficult time managing the events.

I really wish we have some kind of official support to help this industry to grow. We have so many comedians in Saudi Arabia, some of them performs worldwide, we need to support them and their talent.

I hope this will happen someday.

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