Rachel Arieff

U.S.A.

Rachel Arieff

Comic and Mistress of Ceremonies of Anti-Karaoke

Who could turn Monday - "a bitch" of a day to put on a show - into an obligatory night out? Who could turn something as stale as karaoke into a weekly must-see? Only Rachel Arieff, the funniest woman in Barcelona, ​​who invented Anti-Karaoke, the underground karaoke every Monday at Sidecar, "the CBGB of Barcelona", as a result of "the feeling of loneliness she had as an artist" when she arrived in a city ​​without a tradition of stand-up comedy. Because, "taking an actor or a celebrity and making them recite a monologue that a team of scriptwriters has written, that is not stand-up comedy," even though Rachel claims to have known as the Catalan Lenny Bruce, "a garbage man from deep Catalonia."

Before establishing itself in the Plaza Real, the Anti-Karaoke was born at Llantiol, the café-theater of the Raval, where every first Thursday of my Rachel performs her show How to Be Happy All the Time, a show with stellar moments such as the discovery of El Peque (The Little One), a store in Barcelona that is a combination toy/knife store. "Both things at the same time!", remarks Rachel, wide-eyed, for whom one of the things she likes most about Catalans are their "atomic contradictions", materialized in an extreme way in the pairing of El Peque.

Her Barcelona trauma: "When I go to the bank or the post office and upon entering you have to say: "Who's last in line?". This is totally shocking for a person from America. When you go into a public place there, you don't talk to anyone or they will stab you with a knife because it means you are a psychopath.

"I talk about filthy things onstage... but it took me months to overcome my stage fright of talking at the bank!"