Bio
Hari: A "Life" In Pictures
As a child growing up in Queens, NY, Hari Kondabolu was regularly told by his mother to sign his name “Hari K. Kondabolu” to avoid any confusion with other potential Hari Kondabolus. Looking back on this now, he has drawn two conclusions: 1) It is outrageously unlikely that he will ever meet another Hari Kondabolu, especially in the United States. 2) In the event that he did meet another Hari Kondabolu, his mother apparently lacked any confidence that it would be her son who would be the better known of the two, thereby forcing the imposter to keep a middle initial. This instilling and reinforcement of inferiority provided the impetus necessary for Hari to take up the art of stand-up comedy and become the most famous Hari Kondabolu in the World…possibly. (Just kidding, Hari’s Mom is awesome.)
According to the Seattle Times, Hari Kondabolu is "a young man reaching for the hand-scalding torch of confrontational comics like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor." Like his comedic heroes, he wants to speak truth to power with confrontational and personal material. Unlike them, he does not want to die of a morphine overdose or set himself on fire.
In 2010, Hari appeared on John Oliver’s New York Stand-Up Show on Comedy Central. He has also performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Comedy Central's Live at Gotham and was featured in the 2007 HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen.
In 2009, he made his major motion picture debut in the 20th Century Fox Film All About Steve, which the Boston Globe’s Ty Burr said was “to comedy what leprosy once was to the island of Molokai: a plague best contemplated from many miles away." (It should be noted that he had a very small part. It was tiny. He’s practically not even in the movie.)
Of more consequence, Hari’s short film MANOJ, which he wrote, starred in, and co-produced with director Zia Mohajerjasbi, was selected to play at the 2009 Just for Laughs Festival in Chicago, 2008 Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal and was a Finalist in the 2007-2008 Boston Motion Picture Awards. Unbelievably, the film was also licensed by "Showtime Arabia" in Dubai.
Hari has a Masters in Human Rights from the London School of Economics where he wrote a Merit-earning dissertation entitled “Mexican Returnees as Internally Displaced People:An Argument for the Protection of Economic Migrants Under the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.”
He also attended both Bowdoin College and Wesleyan University, graduating from the former institution with a B.A. in Comparative Politics in 2004. He went to Townsend Harris High School and the school’s mascot, “Hari the Hawk,” was named after him during his senior year. He sometimes fears that his greatest achievement was accomplished at 17.
Hari has performed at colleges, comedy clubs and fundraisers across the country, and is available for booking.