Dhaya Lakshminarayanan is an American comedian, performance artist, TV host,[1][2] and storyteller.[3] She has performed at venues such as San Francisco's Asian Art Museum,[4] the San Jose Museum of Art,[5] the Siren Theater,[6][7] San Francisco's Punchline Comedy Club and Cobb's Comedy Club, the Brava Theatre,[8][9] Throckmorton Theatre,[10] and others. She has also performed at comedy festivals such as SF Sketchfest 2015[11] and SF Sketchfest 2020;[12] the Desi Comedy Fest, America's only South Asian comedy festival;[13][14] and the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival.[15] In 2019, Lakshminarayanan, Will Durst, and W. Kamau Bell appeared as guests on KQED in regard to the controversial proposed closure of the historic San Francisco Punchline Comedy Club.[16] The same year, she regularly opened for Greg Proops at the Punchline.
Lakshminarayanan has appeared on radio shows such as NPR's Snap Judgment,[17][18][19][20] on which she has appeared seven times,[21] and been featured on CBS's Bay Sunday with Tracy Humphrey.[22] She is the former host of High School Quiz Show, a public television program created at Boston’s WGBH, which premiered in March 2010.[23] In 2016, KQED named her one of their 20 Women to Watch.[24] In 2019, SFist named her as one of their 13 San Francisco Standup Comedians to Go See Now.[25]