Funny Women Regional Finalist Jenan Younis started Weapons of Mass Hilarity comedy night in 2018, to showcase performers with Middle East/SWANA heritage.
Weapons of Mass Hilarity has become a platform to seek out and present emerging talent in a supportive environment, and has its first weekend long festival coming up in June.
The festival opens on Thursday 2nd June with a mixed bill show, featuring Maria Shehata, Amir Khoshokhan, Jenan Younis, Yasmin Audisho Ghrawi, Shirley & Shirley, Darius Davies, Daphna Baram and Patrick Monahan.
The festival continues during the weekend, with your pick of 10 hour long shows. You don’t actually have to pick just one, you can enjoy all of them!
Some highlights include:
The award-winning double act Shirley & Shirley, are bringing Push It to the festival. Dive into their world of rip-roaring stand up and rambunctious sketch, and learn hilarious truths about the pleasures and pitfalls of motherhood.
Daphna Baram is showing her work in progress Regional, where she’ll tell why she constantly struggles to negotiate her previous identity into the next.
Anoushka Rava’s Melting Pot, where the French-Iranian, London born, Paris raised comedian tackles current societal matters with lightness and irony.
Queer Iraqi/Syrian/Assyrian performer and theatre-maker Yasmeen Audisho Ghrawi brings an ode to our power as individuals and as a group and a reminder that a different world has been, and is always possible, with her show From The Daughter of a Dictator.
Multi-award winning Egyptian-American comedian Maria Shehata jokes about her life in the UK after her engagement fell apart, unlikely flatmates, and the archaic wedding vows she narrowly avoided, in her show Hero.
Jenan herself is showing her show A Conflict of Disinterest where she tries to answer the question ‘How do you change the world when you can’t even change your own little world?’
“There’s a lot of power in comedy to propel change and bring people together. If you can all laugh under the same roof, that’s a great start.” Jenan Younis
The Weapons of Mass Hilarity Comedy Festival runs from Thursday 2nd June to Saturday 4th June, at 2Northdown. You can find more details here, and use the code MIDEAST1 for Funny Women readers discount.
