Nupur Azadi comes to Hyderabad with an eclectic mix of poetry and comedy

Art has long served as a medium for personal expression and a powerful tool for voicing opinions and inspiring change. An advocate of both, Nupur Azadi, a spoken word artiste, who blends poetry and comedy, comes to Hyderabad with her show Bad Posture. Calling her set “boldly feminist and political,” Nupur notes that the audience understands the themes better when there is humour involved.

Nupur uses observational humour with a tone of complaint in the show, “I talk about angry women in a way that feels hopeful.” She also touches upon marriage as an institution, rating acceptable reasons to get married, and ranks love at the bottom With her unique deadpan style of humour, she says, “The show has poetry and comedy, and the best part is the audience gets to choose what is funny and what isn’t, because what you find funny invariably has a nugget of personal truth in it.”

Drawing a contrast between poetry and comedy, Nupur says that while poetry talks about a concluding thought, comedy allows you to share what led to that thought. “The conclusions are often far-fetched, so I enjoy taking the audience on a journey of thought process with me.”

Reflecting on striking a balance between artistic responsibility and creative freedom, Nupur shares that the two are inseparable. Responsibility, she says, provides the structure within which true creative freedom can flourish. Without these boundaries, artists might feel entitled to speak on any topic, even without a grounded perspective. She adds that while censorship has its place in preserving sanity, what truly matters is who enforces it—and the intent behind it. “For instance, if a student makes fun of you as a teacher, you cannot punish them just for that. The intention of silencing someone is important.”

Calling herself a rebel, Nupur says that she writes for a niche audience who is a lot like her. “They hold a bit of humour about how apocalyptic everything around them looks like right now — going through a recession, coming out of a pandemic, and watching the environment around you degrade on an everyday basis. They look at it in an angry, hopeful, funny way,” she explains. Her goal is not to make people laugh, but leave them with a train of thought. “I hope people leave the show a little angrier and a lot more hopeful.”