Dubai Shopping Festival 2013 Adds More Fun And Laughter To City With Dubai International Comedy Carnival

Top local comedians start off event with international bigwigs to follow, as competitions for amateurs and young talents increase interest

The Dubai International Comedy Carnival gets underway on 23rd January (Wednesday) at the Dubai Festival City with Lebanon’s “King of Comedy” Nemr Abou Nassr and the UAE’s “First Lady of Comedy” Mina Liccione headlining the opening acts, paving the way for such renowned international comedians as Michael Winslow and Dean Obeidallah to follow in the days ahead.

The event, one of the highlights of the bouquet of offerings being brought to the city by the Dubai Shopping Festival’s 18th edition this year, will run until January 26th and feature a galaxy of regional and international stars of comedy performing live in Dubai. The aim behind the event is to build a strong community and urban arts scene in Dubai and create more opportunities for local artists to showcase their creativity. There are also several competitions and shows planned around the main sessions of the event to encourage amateur comedians and performers of other associated arts. Overall, the carnival is a celebration of all genres of comedy from around the world in English and Arabic and international headliners and local comedy stars are expected to make thousands of people laugh.

The event is being held at two locations at Dubai Festival City, the community carnival stage and the main event stage. While the former will host hundreds of local performances - including music, an amateur comedy competition, a break dance championship, a comedy improvisation session, film screenings, ‘Physical Comedy’, circus workshops and such others – the latter will host some of the biggest names of regional and global comedy.

The opening act on 23rd January starts at 8pm with Nassr and Liccione, while on Thursday, Saudi comedy stars Bader Saleh and Thamer Al Hamzi will present their Arabic comedy show also at 8pm. Friday will feature a double show with the first starting at 8:45pm in which Ali Al Sayed and Countrymen, the UAE’s “Fresh Prince of Comedy”, will present their act “Emiritization”. This will be followed by Amro Qatamesh, the winner of Arabs Got Talent, at 10pm.

Saturday’s double header will be when the event reaches its crescendo with some of the top names of international comedy spreading the laughing gas in Dubai starting at 7pm. First, Hollywood legend of Police Academy fame and the “Man of 10,000 Voices”, Michael Winslow, will send the audience into stitches with his inimitable style, delivery and content. Then, from 8pm, Dean Obeidallah and Aron Kader of the world famous “Axis of Evil” show will give the audience a hilariously scathing look at the global stereotype of the Middle East and Arabs. They will also be accompanied by Comedy Central Music and Youtube star Go Remy.

All of these shows will take place at Dubai Festival City and have three classes of tickets – regular, VIP and VVIP – priced at AED100, AED175 and AED 250 respectively available online at www.comedy.ae. And there are also a plethora of free shows and competitions surrounding the main acts of the Dubai International Comedy Carnival, which are all aimed at nurturing the local young and amateur talent. These free shows have already been set in motion in a soft launch of the Carnival yesterday which saw participants registering and going through the preliminaries.

The first of these free supporting events is the Amateur Comedy Competition which will see aspiring comedians come on stage to present their material to expert judges and eager audiences. The Circus Workshop comes next in which New York City Circus Artist, Captain Adam, will lead participants through two mornings of learning an entire gamut of tricks from juggling, plate spinning and acrobatics to ‘rola bola’, balancing and even magic tricks. The School of Rock Competition features both bands and solo performers of all age groups. Auditions are taking place at various city schools and the final contest will be held on January 26 at the Carnival’s main venue.

Meanwhile, the GCC Break Dance competition for both men and women is also holding its preliminaries and qualifiers, and will end with a dance off on January 26. Budding film directors are also testing out their abilities to tickle the funny bones of their audiences at the Comedy Movie Competition with the assigning of random topics to contestants on which they will have to write, shoot, edit and submit a film within three days. The submissions will be reviewed and screened on January 26 when the results will also be announced. 

Emirate:  Dubai

Date: Jan 22, 2013

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