Danish Ali’s journey as a comedian has been a jagged one so far. He has been making career switches throughout his life and now, after a period of trial and error, seems to have derived the formula to success.
Initially starting out as a comedian with Pakistan’s first English-comedy news-sketch show The Real News, alongside Saad Haroon and Mikail Lotia, Ali’s career can easily be broken down into chapters.
Throughout this time, Ali continued to pursue a degree in medicine and it was only after graduating that he decided he wanted to act on his dream of setting out as a full-time comedian.
For an artist who started off performing shows and executing stand-up routines in English, he has achieved more success after making the switch to Urdu.
Speaking to The Express Tribune, he explained his choice behind the transition, stating, “It was mostly to reach out to a wider audience, more than anything else.”
Staying true to the idea of staying persistently connected to his fans, he says it helps him stay current and deep-rooted in the field. He adds that as an artist and comedian in Pakistan, it is imperative that he perform in Urdu to gain a more extensive following. “I was performing in English for a long time but was not receiving the kind of response I wanted, until I switched to Urdu,” says Ali. Despite this, he was quick to mention that he still enjoys performing in English as compared to his mother tongue.
Ali, who got his initial break through television and stage, credits the social media for most of his success. “I was doing shows on two television channels, Health TV and Lights Asia and was also hosting a radio show on FM 91 but was not getting noticed. It was only after I started releasing videos on Facebook that the number of people watching my content started to increase day-by-day,” notes Ali.
He states that uploading content on social media websites also aided the economic side of his humour. The wide reach of his sketches facilitated him to repute and brought him to the attention of several advertisers and sponsors.
“After seeing my work on Facebook, I was approached by several advertisers directly — something which might not have happened had I been working in television,” remarks the artist.
Ali believes it was chiefly the “creative control” that he had been missing on while working on television that helped him rise in the business. He blames some factors in television that didn’t permit him to curate his content to its full potential — “Red tape and other complications,” he calls them.
On whether he would be collaborating with his former partner-in-crime and mentor Saad Haroon, he replies with a smile, “Unfortunately, the only thing Saad and I get together for is a Chicken Karahi meal.”
Adding to that, he mentions, “Since Saad (Haroon) now lives in New York and I live in Karachi, it has become very difficult for us to work on projects together. Plus, he has his own things now and I have also taken a different route.”
These days Ali is working on video-based content aimed at targeting online audiences. He is also collaborating with multiple brands on videos and sketches, all of which will be uploaded “very soon,” he says.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 20th, 2015.
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