Why being one’s true self is the only way to success in stand-up comedy

All set for his biggest world tour till date titled Mind Fool which takes Vir Das to 33 countries and across 35 cities in India, the stand-up comedian and actor believes authenticity is the key to his success

It was back in 2006 or 2007 that I performed on an international stage for the first time. It was for a Daler Mehndi show in front of 8,000 people at Wonderland in Dubai. I was doing five minutes of stand-up comedy while he was changing his sherwanis and he changed five sherwanis during the course of the show! I remember being terrified to perform in front of the audience but it was pretty cool because I got to see Daler paaji perform. I really bombed in front of the audience. It was absolutely the wrong atmosphere to be doing stand-up. Once the audience has danced to Bolo Ta Ra Ra Ra, I don’t think they want to hear jokes about airline food in the middle of it! 

Thereafter, I kept going abroad for corporate shows. The first time I did a public show abroad was probably in Singapore. There was an Aussie comedian called Jonathan Atherton who hired me to do three nights at a comedy club. That made some bells ring in my head and I realised I could sell tickets abroad. It began in a small way with a small club in the US on Broadway called Caroline, a 150-seater space where I did one or two shows. It was mostly desi people attending at the time—Indians who missed home. I only really started doing public shows abroad in 2015. I’ve been everywhere including Asia, Australia, Africa, Europe and North America and, this time, we have also added South America, so now the only continent left for me to go is Antarctica.

Cultural differences

What I’ve learnt is that it is important to do your own thing. If you start trying to think what 33 countries will find funny, you will go insane. You also learn with time that they have their own local version of comedy. They even have their own local version of Indian comedy. There is a Hasan Minhaj in America, there is a Russell Peters in Canada and there is a Paul Chowdhry in the UK. These countries have very good diaspora talent. The audience is coming to you because they want to see an Indian perspective and they want to learn about India. So it kind of becomes more important to be authentic at that point.

I may tweak the material a bit but really not that much. At this point, the audience that is coming in has enough of a relationship where they know that this guy will do his own thing. Hopefully, they are coming for that thing.

Also, the jokes will surprise, right? A joke that gets a big applause break in Singapore might not get a big applause break in Chennai but a different joke might get a full applause in Chennai that probably won’t work in Singapore. If you are a pilot, you don’t know where the clouds are but you know the destination. That’s just something you deal with as a comic. It may not even be nationality-driven but energy-driven. If I do ten shows at the Jamshed Bhabha Theatre in NCPA in south Mumbai, different jokes might elicit different responses on different nights. The idea is that it should change, else it will get boring for me as well.

Keeping the fool alive

See, I’m 40 years old, and I don’t know how to be an adult and that is what my new show is going to be about. I suspect that at least 80 per cent of adults don’t know how to be adults. They are scared to death, don’t have their s**t together and are figuring it out. There is a foolish, childish part of us that we are told we have to get rid of by virtue of the fact that we are adults. And my show is about retaining the fool inside.  

I am very privileged that I have gotten to go around the world thrice—not many people get to say that in their lifetime. The fact that one is able to go to Tokyo or South America or Paris is a huge privilege because it also comes with experiencing new cities and learning new things which then feeds into more comedy. That learning lives inside you. It may not immediately translate to your work but it will over time. I went to Istanbul for 48 hours three days ago for a show, and that was enough time to go to see the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, eat at a local restaurant and have two baklavas.  This may not find its way into my jokes immediately but if I’m writing a movie tomorrow, there might be a baklava in it.

Staying true to yourself

If they don’t understand it, I will explain it. I’ve made jokes about Andheria Modh ki Chudail in Norway. They don’t know what a chudail is, or what an Andheria Modh is but I can explain both. It hardly takes 30 seconds more and they will sit and listen to it. It is a little more work, and one shouldn’t be afraid of the work.

If you are the same guy in India and you are the same guy abroad, people in India will come to see you and people abroad will come to see you. If you can find a way to be 100 per cent yourself—and I am not fully there yet—to find your own voice, that authenticity is the goal. To trust that your own unique life experience is worthy of sharing with the entire world and that they will go along to follow your journey which may not necessarily be their own—that has been the learning.

As told to Deepali Singh

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