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In Saudi Arabia, Comedy Cautiously Pushes Limits
You know you are attending a Saudi Arabian comedy night when the sprawling performance tent is pitched 50 miles out into the desert to avoid the morals police and, astonishingly, the ushers are women, even if they remain shrouded by the standard-issue black garments.
Then the swirling disco lights and giant speakers thumping out “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas go still for evening prayer. And sex determines the seating — bachelors on the right, families including women on the left.
“I love Riyadh!” the master of ceremonies starts in Arabic, eliciting a tepid response from the audience of about 1,000 people with his next line: “When you walk on the streets, you don’t see any women!”
Stand-up comedy in Saudi Arabia remains a somewhat clandestine affair, emerging from the raw local performers hired as warm-up acts for the mostly Arab-Americans who began touring the Middle East a few years ago. But Saudi comics are now coming into their own.
Two have established wildly popular shows on YouTube — not least because the Web has emerged as the one public space in the kingdom where it is O.K. to endorse the Arab uprisings. Comedy nights have just switched to Arabic from English, broadening their appeal, and comedians have even been asked to entertain at Koran conferences.
“It is really convenient for Saudi society because it is one person on stage; there is no acting, no women on stage, no men dressed as women,” said Ahmad Fathaldin, a 25-year-old medical student and one of six twentysomethings who write and perform the hit series “On the Fly” on YouTube. “Socially it is accepted.”
It helps that comedy’s main competition for evening entertainment basically consists of cruising the gargantuan Saudi malls — movie theaters or places that might encourage the mingling of the sexes are all banned.
Another factor that helped spawn the comedy phenomenon, and pushed it onto YouTube in the first place, is the stifling sameness of most Arab television networks.
“TV is dying a slow and painful death in this region,” said Fahad Albutairi, 26, a geophysicist and self-described skinny nerd who graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, where he first tried comedy at open-mike nights. Last November he started the other hit Saudi show on YouTube, “La Yekthar,” or “Zip It.”
Among the nearly 19 million Saudis, about 70 percent are under 30. They cannot abide yet another 200 episodes of some Turkish soap opera, Mr. Albutairi said.
“The programs don’t reflect things that matter to the average Saudi,” he said. “We broadcast out of Saudi for Saudi people by Saudi people.”
Omar Hussein, a wiry 25-year-old, supervises a diaper production line for an American conglomerate and uses his free time to star as the main mocking newscaster in “On the Fly.” Last year he and the other founders sought to create “socially responsible comedy” that riffs on the news and national chatter.
Both shows exude a Comedy Central feel and have rejected television, fearful of being censored to avoid offending advertisers. Online, they can push the limits, although not too far.
The shows avoid mentioning the royal family and the absence of the Arab Spring in the kingdom. Nor have they noted that the deposed Tunisian president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, received asylum here; and they rarely touch on the judiciary system or other bastions of Islamic puritanism.
It is a measure of the freer speech available on YouTube that they can go even as far as they do. The popular revolts rocking the Arab world have horrified the Saudi monarchy, to the point that Saudi Arabia deployed troops to smother the uprising in Bahrain.
Of the two shows, “On the Fly” skates a little closer to the precipice on political and social taboos. It ran with a sardonic news report, which the writers described as a gift, of a judge’s defending himself publicly against accusations of graft by saying that the devil possessed him. It also reported the news that a member of the religious police stabbed a man, possibly with nail clippers, after the two fought over a remark that the man’s wife should cover her face.
The most popular episode, released in February amid the upheaval in Egypt and elsewhere, received more than 635,000 hits. “We took a very clear position on the events,” said Dima Ikhwan, 23. She and Lama Sabri, a 22-year-old psychology major, are the two female writers on the show — another departure from the Saudi norm.
The episode cleverly took the form of an Arabic grammar lesson to express the popular mood. The model sentences went from “I understand, your excellency the president” to “Irhal!” or “Leave!” — a sign often brandished by protesters — to “Uff, you’re still here!”
The show also mocked a private Saudi-owned satellite channel for sticking with programs like “Arabs Got Talent” while most other networks broadcast live from the uprisings. It also ridiculed state television for showing a cooking show while devastating flash floods inundated Jidda in late January, leaving 13 people dead.
“What, are we supposed to starve because it’s raining?” Mr. Hussein deadpanned.
The show is not overtly political, however, and tries to take on all sides, particularly since Jidda, where the writers live, has a reputation among Saudis for verging on the decadent.
“On the Fly” has escaped the ire of the country’s powerful religious lobby, perhaps in part because Mr. Hussein subtly telegraphs his own faith through vocabulary and subject matter. One religious viewer commented online, “This show is great, but I wish you did it without the music and the women.”
The show exudes wit — creating short vignettes, for example, to explain the elastic uses of the word “Inshallah,” or “God willing,” including “be patient,” “scram” and “dream on.” And it endears itself by skewering reviled state institutions like Saudia, the national airline, for having 29 vice presidents, including “vice president for making sure people praying in the aisles don’t dawdle.”
Fans love that Mr. Hussein cuts to the chase while the mainstream media dances around issues. “He captures the culture, he captures the attitude and he really highlights the ridiculous on issues that are blocking us,” said Fatin Yousef Bundagji, a business consultant and activist.
The YouTube shows use humor to treat sensitive issues that result in riots elsewhere. When Terry Jones, the Florida pastor, burned Korans, Mr. Albutairi joked on “Zip It” that Mr. Jones had mistakenly ignited a few Bibles and children’s books because they were in Arabic, and he suggested that Saudi high school students send the pastor their biology textbooks.
His most popular episode, with more than 800,000 hits, was mostly about the ill-starred Saudi soccer team. “The majority of Saudis are not political, and you have to take that into account,” Mr. Albutairi said.
At the stand-up comedy show outside Riyadh, the jokes concentrated on foreign laborers and the differences between the sexes — almost none referred to the regional turmoil.
Young Saudis said they enjoyed the show. “They were not cracking me up, but you can see the potential,” said Hassan Mansouri, 27, a banker who frequented comedy clubs while studying in Boulder, Colo. “It was nice to see a Saudi flavor.”
In Saudi Arabia, both religious tradition and political suppression hinder public gatherings. So, with comedy suddenly all the rage, performers are bombarded with requests, many they consider oddly inappropriate.
“Everybody wants to do stand-up comedy everywhere and anywhere and they find any excuse,” Mr. Hussein said. He added, imitating a caller, “ ‘We have this workshop about the Koran, Omar, come do some stand-up comedy.’ I get invites like that.”
Neil MacFarquhar
The New York Times