About BWC
BROWN WOMEN COMEDY
Laugh your heart out to an award-winning bold & besharam (shameless) line-up of Indian & South Asian women comedians. No topic is too taboo. These women won’t be holding back. Your parents probably won’t approve as you trauma bond watching these women turn family expectations & life into comedy gold. With over 4000 people attending in 2024 and sold out shows across Melbourne, Sydney & Adelaide – you won’t want to miss this one.
In 2026 for Melb Int Comedy Festival we’ll have 12 shows on at 
Queen Vic Women’s Centre 210 Lonsdale Street from 26 March – 18 April at 6:45pm. The full line-up is below.
Upcoming Shows
Past Shows
Adelaide (March 2024)
Melbourne (April 2024)
Up and comers (Melbourne)
2026 Melb Int Comedy Festival Shows
‘Brown Women Comedy’ is the shake-up to Australia’s comedy scene that’s well overdue!’ Draw Your Box
★★★★ A comedy line-up with no white men? Can it be true?! Free from the swinging of colonial dicks, Brown Women Comedy is a space where bad-ass brown women tell the kind of jokes that Australians rarely get to hear – and they totally kill it. – Time Out
★★★★ Intimate, thoughtful and flipping shame on its head, Arts Hub
★★★★★ ..a comedic hidden gem that is not to be missed, Upside Adelaide
We’ll have 12 shows on at Queen Vic Women’s Centre 210 Lonsdale Street from 26 March – 18 April at 6:45pm.
2026 LINE-UP
Thursday 26 March – Guneet Kaur, Annie Louey, Aliya Kanani, Ria Patel
Friday 27 March – Guneet Kaur, Urvi Majumdar, Annie Louey, Erica D’Souza
Saturday 28 March – Guneet Kaur, Urvi Majumdar, Aliya Kanani, Erica D’Souza
Thursday 2 April – Maitreyi Karanth, Guneet Kaur, Annie Louey, Ria Patel
Friday 3 April – Maitreyi Karanth, Guneet Kaur, Annie Louey, Aliya Kanan
Saturday 4 April – Maitreyi Karanth, Guneet Kaur, Annie Louey, Erica D’Souza
Thursday 9 April – Sharul Channa, Abby Govindan, Guneet Kaur, Urvi Majumdar
Friday 10 April – Sharul Channa, Abby Govindan, Guneet Kaur, Urvi Majumdar
Saturday 11 April – Sharul Channa, Abby Govindan, Guneet Kaur, Urvi Majumdar
Thursday 16 April – Sharul Channa, Abby Govindan, Guneet Kaur, Ru Halwala
Friday 17 April – Sharul Channa, Abby Govindan, Guneet Kaur, Urvi Majumdar
Saturday 18 April – Sharul Channa, Abby Govindan, Guneet Kaur, Ru Halwala*
Line-up may vary
Stand-up Comedy Workshops
So you want to learn stand-up? Find out about our
comedy workshops taking place in Melbourne.
Tell us where to perform next.
And we might just head your way.
National Tour in 2024
Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne
Brown Women Comedy is going on a National Tour in 2024 to Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne! After our success at Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2023 we’re hitting the road. We’ll be at Adelaide Fringe, Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Sydney Comedy Festival. Follow us on Instagram for updates.
Up and Comers Showcase (Melbourne)
Brown Women Comedy presents this showcase of up and comers.
These women of colour graduated from our first-ever comedy workshops, where, over 8 weeks, they learnt how to create and perform stand-up in a safe, inclusive space.
BWC Media Reviews
Meet the South Asian women challenging Australia’s white male comedy scene with Brown Women Comedy
Brown Women Comedy’ Is The Shake-Up to Australia’s Comedy Scene That’s Well Overdue. Sindhu Vee, Lilly Singh and Mindy Kaling. These are some of the names that often come to mind when one thinks of a brown female comedian. But closer to home, there’s a new generation of South Asian Australian women coming up in the comedy scene, ready to challenge the stereotype that brown women aren’t funny – and make us laugh while they’re at it.
The Melbourne Comedy Festival’s Brown Women Comedy night was an evening packed full of laughter. Amna Bee, Sunanda, Urvi Majumdar, and Swati Vats tackled South Asian taboos and brought big belly-laughs as they navigated everything from all-girls schools to Pakistani-Indian relations. Each comic delivered a tight routine showcasing their unique observations of the realities of being a brown woman to an audience who responded knowingly and uproariously.
-Maya Pilbrow, Editor at SAARI Collective
Without going into all the structural, systemic, cultural and patriarchal challenges we face, life can be a pretty serious affair when you’re trying to live your best life as a brown woman. So, being in a room where we can listen to relatable stories and then giggle and laugh it all out together is doing a massive community service to all of our wellbeing! Thank heavens for Brown Women’s comedy, more please!.
-Leah Vandenberg, Actor and Activist.
Out of the 500-plus shows at the comedy festival, I counted only eight brown women – and six of them are here,” exclaims Daizy Maan, producer of Brown Women Comedy and the show’s concluding act. There’s a well-documented gender disparity in the comedy industry, but there’s a race problem too – a doubleewhammy for women of colour.
But if you’re solely expecting jokes about the idiosyncrasies of brown parents and the weight of unmet cultural expectations, Brown Women Comedy isn’t for you. It touches on some of those things, yes, but so much more – sex, mental health, queerness, divorce.
Brown Women Comedy is on at Queen Victoria Women’s Centre until April 12.
–Reviewed by Sonia Nair, The Age.
BWC Alumni
Daizy Maan
Her hilarious secret TikTok channel calling out sexism in Punjabi music and…well…Punjabi men, has garnered over 25 million views. She’s decided to turn her sassy yet pendu (or ‘bogan’) Punjabi existence into comedy, asking “is this offensive when it’s in English?” every two minutes. Described as “a sharp storyteller who speaks with laid-back confidence”, Daizy once had a real day job leading startup programs for universities and is now “self-employed”, at least according to the last census
Kru Harale
Niv Prakasam
Niv Prakasam won the reality TV show Queens of Comedy that aired on the TLC channel in 2017 kick starting her comedy career. She appeared on the Netflix show Ladies Up in 2020. She has toured the country with her material. Her first YouTube video garnered 5.7M views and with 82,000 subscribers she’s just getting started.
Ramya Ramapriya
With her quirky take on life, Ramya Ramapriya blends sharp societal observations with humour. Featured on Comicstaan and Amazon Prime, she co-wrote Netflix’s Guns and Gulaabs. Known for her hilarious IG skits. Born in Mysore but brought up all over India, she’s ready to shake things up down under.
Urvi Majumdar
A fast-rising star in Australian comedy, known for her dry, witty observations and sometimes deadpan humour – though Urvi assures you she can totally be happy too! Currently touring her latest show ‘Burnt’ nationally after the success of her debut solo, which has now been adapted for screen by ABC and Screen Australia. You can check out ‘Urvi Went to an All Girls School’ online (soon)!*
Ru Halwala
Ru galavants around town performing stand up, improv, sketch comedy and drag. She hosts Ru’s Chit-Chat-Cadillac improv comedy podcast, and events like Holi Festival 2024 and The STEAM Room ft. Doctor Karl. Ru’s comedy is a chaotic, eclectic mess dressed in a cute fit. Eat it up, b*tch!
Jess Karamjeet
Originally from the UK, stand-up comedian and screenwriter Jess is a rising star on the New Zealand comedy circuit. In 2022, she was selected for the NZ Comedy Trust’s ‘Ones To Watch’ showcase and won the PANNZ Touring Prize at Auckland Fringe Festival.
Alongside solo shows at both New Zealand and Melbourne’s International Comedy Festivals, Jess is a regular at Auckland’s No Homo: Queer Comedy night and also founded the Pan-Asian Comedy School Aotearoa aka PACSA (Laughs), which trains New Zealand diaspora creatives.
Her writing credits include soap operas around the world – she was one of the brains behind Neighbours’ #Chelly but there’s no make-believe here – her truth-bomb sets will have you on the edge of your seat.
Kushi Venkatesh
After performing a speech that made the entire school laugh and got her elected as school captain, Kushi decided to take her comedy, which shines a light on stereotypical teen brown culture, to the world of stand-up. Since then, the 18-year-old Adelaide-based comedian and content creator has made the state finals of RAW Comedy, was crowned the funniest teenager in South Australia 2023 and performed in the Class Clowns National Grand Finals at Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Her talent has also caught the eyes of several comedians, leading her to win the 2023 National EdStart Achievement Award for Performing and Visual Arts.
Leela Varghese
Indian/Lebanese filmmaker and TV presenter Leela is one half of award-winning, Adelaide-based musical comedy duo ‘The Coconuts’, whose show ‘Brown on The Outside, White on The Inside’. Also an award-winning filmmaker, Leela is in production for her debut feature, adult animation Lesbian Space Princess, while her accomplished TV career includes writing, presenting and producing popular children’s programmes Totally Wild and Behind the News.
Guneet Kaur
Described as both “sharp” and “anxious” by the Sydney Morning Herald, a RAW Comedy National Finalist in 2022, Guneet’s quirky observations and hilarious takes on the complexities of her identity will leave you in stitches.
Kripa Krithivasan
Kripa has been making people laugh for years – she was only two years-old when she realised she loved the sound of her own voice.
Laughing on the outside, dying on the inside, join Kripa as she delves into the depths of her quarter-life crisis.
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