The crowd exploded into laughter as Pakistani comedian Shehzad Ghias Shaikh threw them his final punchline, gripping the microphone as he roasted the dating app Tindr and traditional South Asian family matchmaking. "I don't want an app to find me random girls to sleep with!" he cried. "I want my mother to find me random girls to sleep with!" Shaikh, 26, has just returned from New York and is trying to reinvigorate live comedy in Pakistan, an Islamic nation. It's a difficult, sometimes dangerous quest. Aside from the usual financial struggles and small audiences, Pakistani comedians face harsh blasphemy laws and a barrage of death threats if their jokes offend the wrong person. Stand-up comedians Shehzad Ghias Shaikh, gestures while performs during a show at The Second Floor (T2F) a community space for open dialogue, in Karachi, Pakistan | Source: Reuters
Pakistani satirists like Luavut Zahid also want to make their audience curious - and angry.
A year ago, she and two others launched Pakistan's answer to The Onion, The Khabaristan Times. Writers cracks dark jokes about violence and lampoon those they hold responsible. Hackers have attacked the site repeatedly.
"We're not just trying to make people laugh, we're trying to make a point, although sometimes it can be really dark," Zahid said. "Satire is a way of looking at the world and screaming 'What is wrong with you?'"
Shah used to write weekly columns in Pakistan and was deluged with hate mail after mocking suicide bombers 'who put the error in terrorism'. But it wasn't just threats that drove him abroad. He needed bigger audiences.
"In Pakistan, the audiences for comedy are very small. You can bomb once, but if you bomb twice, it's tough," he said. "Out here (in Australia) I'm doing four or five shows a week. There (Pakistan), I'd do a corporate event every month. You need to perform more regularly to be good."
Saad Haroon, a popular comedian now working in New York, says Pakistani artists are going online to get around the scarcity of venues and small audiences.
"There's lots of development on social media. It's clandestine, guerrilla comedy," he said.
Yet even Internet distribution has problems.
Comedian Ali Gul Pir posted his first song about the corrupt children of wealthy landlords on YouTube in 2012 after radio and television rejected the racy lyrics. It got a million views in three days.
Three months later, the government banned YouTube, after a provocative film about Prophet Muhammad sparked deadly riots.
Pir hit back with an expletive-laden song about the ban, mocking Islamic school students who rioted as sexually frustrated and politicians who implemented the ban as corrupt hypocrites.
"Open the ban, thief," he sang as hapless policemen chased down a person in a YouTube costume. "These are our rights."
The video was wildly popular. The ban is still in place.