Enjoy the spontaneity of experiences in Hyderabad at Spoiler Alert by Anshu Mor

A good joke translates pain into humour, shapes reality and how you look at life. For Anshu Mor, comedy has always been about adding a comic perspective into what we live through — not escaping life but standing back and finding a way to laugh at it honestly.

Spoiler Alert explores the spontaneous nature of life through the popular movie phrase

That thinking shapes Spoiler Alert, his latest stand-up show. The idea came from a phrase we all casually use while watching movies. “If someone hasn’t seen a film or a series, you say ‘spoiler alert’ because you don’t want to tell them what happens,” Anshu says. “But in life, we want everything planned.” The show plays with that contradiction. Why do we want surprises in cinema but certainty everywhere else? “If your life was a movie and you already knew everything that would happen,” he asks, “would you even enjoy watching it? Or would it feel too predictable and boring?”

From there, the show moves through different parts of his life. It’s a mix of storytelling and observational comedy, built around family, friendships, and the stage of life he’s currently in. There are jokes about his wife and son, stories from home, and moments that question how well he’s doing as a parent. “There’s a big question in the show about how good a father I am to my own son,” he says. It’s personal, but never heavy-handed. Everything is filtered through humour.

Anshu says stand-up has completely changed how he experiences everyday life. After spending close to 18 years in a corporate job, comedy forced a kind of self-awareness he wasn’t used to. “This art form makes you look at your thoughts all the time — how you feel about society, how you feel about incidents around you,” he says. On stage, there’s no room for pretending. “You can’t fool yourself. You know exactly what’s happening. People are either laughing or they’re not.”

That honesty is also why vulnerability comes naturally to his work. He doesn’t believe there should be a strict line about what you can or can’t share on stage. “As long as you can eventually make it funny, there shouldn’t be a limit,” he says. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Emotional material takes time. “First you write the truth. You pour your heart out on paper. That itself is like therapy.”

At the end of it all, Spoiler Alert isn’t trying to explain life or fix anything. It simply asks people to loosen their grip a little. Things won’t go as planned anyway. You might as well laugh when they don’t.

Tickets at Rs 499. January 25, 5.30 pm.

At The Comedy Theatre, Gachibowli.

Email: anshula.u@newindianexpress.com

X: @indulgexpress

For more updates, join/follow our WhatsApp, Telegram and YouTube channels.