Fiery Stand-Up Comedy With Negin Farsad and Friends

Join us for an evening of fiery standup featuring Negin Farsad, named one of 50 Funniest Women by Huffington Post, and one of the 10 Best Feminist Comedians by Paper Magazine. Joining her are comics Tahaa Kahn, Pooja Reddy, and Mic Nguyen and Emcee: Lia Chang

Negin Farsad was selected as a TEDFellow for her work in social justice comedy, and even gave a TEDTalk because they slipped up and let a comedian on their vaunted stage. She is the author of the recently released How To Make White People Laugh, a memoir-meets-social-justice-comedy manifesto which was nominated for the Thurber Prize for Humor and recommended by Oprah Magazine. Farsad is host of Fake the Nation, a political comedy podcast on the Earwolf network and she’s a regular panelist on NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. She appears on the current season of Nat Geo’s Year Million, the upcoming season of HBO’s High Maintenance, and the last season of Netflix’s Chelsea Handler Show.

She is also the director/writer/star of the rom-com 3rd Street Blackout, starring Janeane Garofalo, Ed Weeks, and John Hodgman (now available on Amazon). She has written for/appeared on Comedy Central, MTV, PBS, IFC, Nickelodeon and others. She is director/producer of the feature films The Muslims Are Coming! starring Jon Stewart, David Cross and Lewis Black and Nerdcore Rising starring Weird Al Yankovic (both available wherever movies are streamed/downloaded). She has written good-old fashioned articles for The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Oprah Magazine, Indiewire, and others. She has successfully sued New York State’s MTA over the right to put up funny posters about Muslims.

She started her comedy career as a Cornell and Columbia-educated policy advisor for the City of New York.

Held in conjunction with the current exhibition Comparative Hell: Arts of Asian Underworlds, on view through May 7.

Tahaa Kahn is one of the rare comics with heritage from both Middle East and South Asia. Tahaa moved from Germany to the U.S. and has lived and worked all over Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East. His content is best described as intelligent, insightful, well rounded, diversified, and most importantly hilarious

He has been performing standup all over the U.S. and was crowned the funniest person in the hospitality industry in 2022. Kahn is also officially recognized by Unicef as producer and host for his donation  comedy show Comedy for Good! to help fund several Unicef Projects. 

Mic Nguyen is a writer, podcaster and stand-up comedian living in Brooklyn. His stand-up has been featured on Netflix and he was the opening act in Ronny Chieng's special, Speakeasy. Mic's writing can be found in McSweeneys, Esquire, and NBC News, and he’s contributed to NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me. He’s co-host of the popular podcast Asian Not Asian where he discusses Asian American funny stuff like the PSAT and gold. He performs all over the country.

Pooja Reddy is a rural Kentucky raised first-generation American with roots in Hyderabad, India. A recovering government employee from the Obama Administration, Pooja is now a comedy writer and stand-up comedian based in NYC. Pooja co-hosts the New York Times recommended comedy show, Kutti Gang, which debuted their first comedy special on PBS in 2020. Pooja has been featured on Vulture’s Comics to Follow and can be seen hosting for Disney ABC’s Localish Network. Pooja incorporates her experiences growing up in the South, her passion for the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, and the best of her Scorpio traits to her writing.

Lia Chang is an actor, a multi-media content producer, activist, documentarian and an Award-winning filmmaker and co-founder of Bev’s Girl Films making films that foster inclusion and diversity on both sides of the camera. Lia is also the host and Executive Producer of BACKSTAGE PASS WITH LIA CHANG, an Arts and Entertainment and Lifestyle program that airs on Sundays at  6:30pm on FIOS 34, RCN 83, Spectrum 56/1996 and streams on MNN2. Lia was a syndicated columnist for KYODO News, writing about arts and entertainment in her What’s Hot in New York column from 1995-2004. Lia was recently profiled on Asian American Life. BGF collaborates with and produces multi-media content for artists, actors, designers, theatrical productions, composers, musicians and corporations.