Raphael Ghanem

Raphael Ghanem is a Rio de Janeiro born stand-up comedian now based in Sao Paulo whose career sits at the intersection of theatre training, television acting and the modern Brazilian touring stand-up circuit. A carioca who began studying acting at the age of thirteen at the legendary O Tablado school founded by Maria Clara Machado, where he practiced improvisation for nine years, Ghanem went on to study at the Academia Nacional de Atores and the Casa das Artes de Laranjeiras and took dubbing courses with Mayra Goes before fully committing to stand-up in 2009. The theatrical depth of that early training distinguishes him from many of his Brazilian peers who arrived at stand-up through open mics or YouTube: his sets carry the rhythm of a trained actor used to long runs of dialogue, and his solo shows are constructed less as joke strings than as one man theatre pieces. By the late 2010s, after years of clubs and small theatres, he had emerged as one of the most consistent national headliners of his generation, touring all Brazilian state capitals, hundreds of smaller interior cities and more than a dozen countries with his trademark relaxed, conversational style.

Ghanem's flagship solo show Se E Que Voce Me Entende has become the centrepiece of his career, a touring programme that he has rebuilt and extended through hundreds of performances. The show is presented without costumes, props or accessories and consists entirely of original material drawn from his own life: relationship stories, observations about cariocas in Sao Paulo, generational anxieties, and the small social rituals that he turns into long narrative bits. In a single recent year he performed two hundred and ten sold-out sessions for more than one hundred and ninety thousand spectators, taking the show to all Brazilian capitals and to thirteen countries with Brazilian diaspora audiences. Alongside the touring solo work he has built a parallel career as a screen actor: on Brazilian television he has appeared in the TV Globo teen drama Malhacao, the Multishow series 220 Volts and De Volta Pra Pista, the TV Globo crime drama Verdades Secretas, the prime time telenovelas A Lei do Amor and Verao 90, the Amazon original film Outono and the Netflix series B.O. He has also developed a programme titled Meu Programa Na TV which he tours as a hybrid stand-up and chat format. His YouTube channel and social media accounts function less as primary content engines than as funnels for the live shows, with clips drawn from theatre performances feeding ticket sales for the national tour. He is associated through performances and collective tours with the Comedians Brasil scene built around fellow Sao Paulo based national headliners and shares producers and venues with several of the genre's biggest names.

Within the Brazilian stand-up landscape Ghanem is widely regarded as one of the most theatrically polished mainstream comedians, a performer whose long form sets read like one man plays and whose touring numbers place him among the busiest national headliners. His business profile is built around the durable touring brand of Se E Que Voce Me Entende rather than around constant new releases, allowing him to extend the same hour through many cycles of refinement while simultaneously preparing the next show. He has cultivated a particularly loyal audience in the Rio Sao Paulo corridor where he splits his time between the two cities, performing regularly at Espaco Unimed in Sao Paulo and Qualistage in Rio de Janeiro, and his international circuit covers Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan among others. His TV CV gives him a wider screen presence than most of his stand-up peers, and his work in soap operas and series has helped to introduce him to audiences who do not necessarily follow the comedy scene. As a public figure he keeps a relatively low controversy profile, choosing material grounded in personal life rather than political commentary, which has helped him to scale across the politically polarised Brazilian audience without alienating any large segment of his ticket buyers.