In 2022, when the mobilisation started in Russia, comedians began arriving in Almaty with nowhere to perform. A 28-year-old comic and his wife opened an 800-square-metre room and let them in. Four years later, Almaty Central Stand Up Club is the hub of stand-up comedy in Central Asia. This is a long conversation with its co-founder, Nuraskan, recorded in Almaty, about building a comedy scene almost from scratch, in Kazakh and Russian, languages that reach about 21 million people worldwide and no further. He is remarkably unsentimental about it. Nobody set out to save comedy during the war; it was simply the only thing any of them were good at. In four years the club has never charged a comedian for stage time. Thirty comics get three minutes each at the weekly open mic, and the ones worth watching move up to five minutes, then ten, then a paid weekend slot. For a year or two he sat with anyone who asked and took their material apart line by line, what he calls being an author for somebody. There's a very funny stretch about trying to book a Western headliner. The club ran an entire marketing campaign aimed at Joe Rogan before someone on his team explained that a twenty-hour flight was never going to happen. They actually landed Chris Tucker, whose management said yes, and then couldn't raise the fee: hundreds of thousands, he points out, not the millions the Saudis pay, and money that exists in Almaty if anyone will spend it. He's candid about the pressure, too. Comedy in Kazakhstan is controlled, he says, not the way journalists are chased, but enough that everyone is careful, and a comedian walks a thin rope between government attention and a fierce local cancel culture. And he has a sharp answer to a question comics ask constantly. Everyone obsesses over output, the hour a day of writing, the discipline. What most of them lack, he says, is input: they aren't curious, don't watch good films or documentaries, and don't have meaningful conversations. Comedy comes from living, which is why comedians get better with age. Also in here: where Kazakh comedy really comes from (aitys, a centuries-old improvised verse duel played on the dombyra that's essentially a roast battle), what independence in 1991 meant for comedians who had always answered to Moscow, a roast that hit a million views in eight days, the Eddie Murphy special subtitled into Kazakh that shaped a generation, why Louis C.K. is a demigod across the post-Soviet world, and why he still tells new comics to read Judy Carter's The Comedy Bible, but only after they've found their own voice. The Comics Unseen is a series of long conversations with comedians you haven't heard of yet, and with the people building the rooms they'll come up in. Read the full interview on Hop For Pop: https://hopforpop.com/nuraskhan-baskozhaev-central-stand-up-almaty/ Follow us on Instagram: @hopforpop and @thecomicsunseen Keywords: Almaty comedy, Central Stand Up Almaty, Kazakhstan stand-up, Kazakh comedy, Central Asia comedy, comedy club owner, open mic, Russian comedians, comedy podcast, stand-up comedy, comedy advice, Joe Rogan, Chris Tucker, Louis C.K., aitys, The Comics Unseen.
