What started as an occasional Saturday night of comedy in a tiny henna salon has become a multicultural, three-day, stand-up festival – with each day taking on a different geographical or cultural area from the Middle East to South Asia.
The Kufiya Comedy Festival will present local comics such as Sheridi Lester, who’s opened for Jeff Ross, as well as touring talent like Kiki Young, who founded Crazy Woke Asians. And the festival features more than just jokes. It’ll offer short films, food, live music, dance and a marketplace inside the Apprentice Creative Space, 919 Morrell Avenue.
Marena Riyad is the festival’s founder. A Palestinian-American who wanted to be “a non-starving artist,” she opened a salon, the Haus of Henna, in Oak Lawn. But performing was her real drive; she’d started doing stand-up in 2018.
Once a month or so, Riyad transforms her salon into a stand-up showcase. The comics have not been solely Middle Eastern (she’s sometimes the only one on the bill who is). She’s presented Latino, Black and Asian comics as well as gay and nonbinary artists. Her purpose, she says, is “to bring comedy and community together for under-represented people.”
Friday, the Kufiiya Festival focuses on South Asian comics and material (Desi), Saturday is Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) and Sunday is Southeast Asian. People can attend via daytime passes, nighttime passes, all-day passes, even a three-day pass to the entire festival.
- Kufiya Comedy Festival, May 10-12 at the Apprentice Creative Space, 919 Morrell Avenue, Dallas. Tickets available online at eventbrite.
Got a tip? Email Jerome Weeks atjweeks@kera.org. You can follow him on X (Twitter) @dazeandweex.
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