Garam Masala Dating
A live dating dating show built around South Asian singles is about to be charting in international waters. Garam Masala Dating puts singles on stage for a first date shaped by the two hosts and the people watching. Comedy, dating games and audience participation give the performance a structure, while the participants' answers and reactions provide fresh material. The show is hosted by comedians Surbhi and Wyatt Feegrado and has signed with the agent Barry Katz and is planning a 32-city international tour for this fall.
The route covers the United Kingdom, continental Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India, with stops in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Bali. The first dates are expected to be announced in November. Venues will include the famed Top Secret Comedy Club in London, The Habitat in Mumbai, the Comedy Store in Sydney among others.
"We are going where the audience already is," Feegrado says. "London and Toronto are the two places we get asked about every single week, so they went on the list first. After that we looked at where the clips were being shared, and Sydney, Dubai and Bengaluru were impossible to ignore."
Katz is one of the better-known names in American comedy representation. His career includes helping to launch Dave Chappelle, Wanda Sykes and Bill Burr, and he was an executive producer of the NBC series Last Comic Standing.
A format about South Asian dating turns out to travel well, because the diaspora it speaks to is spread across most of the English-speaking world and the Gulf. That distinction matters when a format travels. The hosts can take the same basic show to another city without expecting the people on stage to bring the same experiences. Family expectations, dating habits and the language people use to describe a potential partner give each conversation room to develop differently.
Each stop will cast local singles, which means the show will change from city to city. A date in Birmingham will run on different assumptions about family, money and marriage than one in Melbourne or Mumbai. Surbhi will oversee casting for every city herself and applications will open through garammasaladating.com/apply as each date is announced.
"A guy in Toronto and a guy in Dubai will both tell you their mother has no say in who they marry," Surbhi says. "They are both lying, but they are lying in completely different ways. That is 32 different shows for the price of one format."
The show already reaches people outside its live venues through clips. Its team reports more than 200 million content views and over 40 sold-out productions across four seasons. The tour is an attempt to bring the live version to a wider audience, rather than treating online viewing as the only way to encounter it.
The Indian dates are planned for Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. The hosts are curious about how the format will land in a country where the family's role in a match is often an open arrangement and seldom a punchline. Surbhi thinks audiences there will be quicker than any others to shout advice at the stage.
The tour is one of two expansions under way. A television adaptation of the show is also in development, and the team expects to have news on both before the end of the year.
A tour would also change who gets to be part of the show. Someone who has only seen its clips could become a spectator in the room or apply to take part. In a format built around a first meeting, the new audience is also a potential source of new participants.
For the comedian from Dwarka, an Indian performance would add another kind of encounter. She built the show around a subject that has never belonged to only one country: whom people choose to date, and how many other people have an opinion about it and now she gets to bring it 360.
