Hyderabad gets ready for the Tech Roast Show: Comedy meets tech with AI-driven laughs

What happens when you mix comedy and tech? Either something very revolutionary, or a bunch of roasts. Well, the Tech Roast Show is both of these. It encompasses an almost revolutionary way of roasting techies. Austin Nasso, Jesse Warren and Nikita Oster, famous stand-up comics come to Hyderabad on their India tour of the Tech Roast Show. It is a show which roasts and at the same time, celebrates the life of techies. Like all other roast shows, they do this with crowdwork. They play a bunch of games with improv tools, and AI bots they have developed specifically for the show.

There are sections where they try to find out who has the worst job, the worst nightmares and dreams; roast them; and in the process, try to get immersed in the corporate tech culture of each city they go to. To make it more immersive and innovative, they also use AI assisted props. “We do a section where we call an audience member on stage, throw situations at them, and have them show empathy towards Jesse. Simultaneously, an AI bot is doing the same. At the end of it, we see who was able to show the most empathy, and surprisingly quite often, the bot wins,” Nikita laughs. In the beginning of the show, they ask the audience a few questions in an app they have developed, and with this real time data, they have a section where they make jokes.

The three comics collaborated after they met each other at stand-up shows, and realised they have similar ideologies. “When I moved to Seattle in 2018, I saw that the city is overrun by techies who are out of touch with reality. It was like there were almost two different societies living in the city—techies and rest. In a way, it was like they were bargaining for a higher pay for the lack of self-awareness,” says Jesse, who got the group together. While each of them had their own journeys—Nikita, from Russia was not exposed to stand-up, but as soon as he tried it for the first time in the States, he fell in love with it; Austin, a “class clown” from childhood started pursuing it immediately after high school, they came together with their shared opinion on life as techies, and their love for comedy.

When we asked them about the comedy scene in India, especially in the niche of roasts, Nikita says that lately, he has observed a shift towards crowd-work, and he speculates that it could be because of the influence of social media. He says, “The effect of tech is not just confined to people in tech. Algorithms affect social media and consequently, comedy as well. More and more comics are indulging in crowd-work as it gives them more content to post on social media.”

Tickets at ₹799.

October 25, 8.30 pm.

At Shilpakala Vedika, Madhapur.