I asked Nazira my improv professor to define Improvisation and she said:
Improvisación para mí es hacerte caso, es fluir, es este poder entrar en un estado, a ver le digo como un trance de percepción entre tu cabeza y tu cuerpo y tu corazón y decir que sí. Es decir que sí a una situación y creertela y jugar y fluir jugando.
To me, improvisation is to pay attention, to flow, it is to be able to enter a state [of mind/being] it is like a critical moment of perception among your head, your body and your heart. And it is to say yes. It is to say yes to a situation and to believe it and to play and to play as you flow.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Careful with the Menu
When I was travelling Northern Peru, I went to a restaurant to have a meal. I decided to go to a nice restaurant and they had candles lit on the table. Everybody looked at me since I was obviously a foreigner and it wasn't high tourist season. I asked for the menu and I opened it and put it near the candle to read it. But I put it too close to the candle and so my menu caught on fire. I didnt realise at first but when I realised I panicked and so I start slamminng the menu on the table to out the fire. So the people are looking at me like Im a maniac but the fire wouldnt go out so I just took the glass of water and threw it all over the table. And the fire went out. Of course I was really embarassed and everybody in the restaurant was laughing at me. Then the waiter brought me a new menu and once he moved me to another table he moved the candle away from me to avoid another 'fire' and as he stifled his laughter, said 'Cuidado con el menu por favor.." (Careful with the menu please). I was like 'ok.'
Friday, May 04, 2007
Improv in Peru: DI QUE SI! [SAY YES!]
So before I got to Lima, I had no exposure to improvisation as a branch of comedy apart from the Drew Carey Show. For some reason, I had neglected to even look for an improv group when I was in other parts of Latin America but I finally took the time to do it when a friend of mine told me he was taking classes at an improv school. I decided to take classes and interview the professors to learn more about what it means to do improv and its function in the peruvian context.
Improvisation has not been in Peru for a really long time but it has become increasingly popular within the last five years. I started taking improv classes with a group called Keto. Doing improv requires complete coordination of your mind and body. The first warm-up exercise was to walk around the room and to point to an object and to call it a different name for each step that you take. This is a means of getting you to rethink what you assume to be 'normal' or 'basic' knowledge and to open your mind to re-creating things.
Then you have a conversation with someone where you must make up a story from what the person says by starting each sentence with "si y..."("yes and..."). For instance, a conversation would start:
Person 1: John went to brush his teeth
Person 2: Yes and then he ate his breakfast
Person 1: yes and he did not finish because the breakfast was not well cooked
Person 2: yes and so he ate his shoe
...
So you basically create a whole new story for about 5 minutes without hesistating at any moment in the conversation or you have to start over and when that happens, your partner usually wants to kill you.
They then have you climb on top of a ladder and fall back into the arms of fellow students standing below you. I didn't have a problem doing that since I had already done bunjee jumping and I felt like there was no real danger involved but some people really couldn't let themselves fall back from the top of the ladder. But then again, I may just be a psycho in love with physical danger.
The purpose of these basic exercises are the following:
1. Mind and body coordination
2. Teamwork
3. Trust
The exercises often seem simple at first but they require you to think on your feet. They also have exercises where they have each student come up with a 2 minute story about any one topic. My first day at class each person had to tell a story about a carpenter but they would change the terms of telling the story once you stood up to talk. So when you get up to tell the story they will say: you must sing a song about the carpenter and the genre of the music is a western...Go!" Or they will tell you that the Carpenter is a Science Fiction movie and you must lay out who directed it, where it was made and give a summary of the movie in 2 minutes.
Director Sergio Paris explained that many scholars, actors or directors often look down on improv until they actually do it and they realise it is even harder to think on your feet in front of a paying audience when there is no script. Improv is probably the hardest form of theater that exists because it is so spontaneous. However, there are actually structures to doing improv that they teach you but they will all tell you the way to be good at it is through practice and experience.
The Relationship between Improv and Humour
So the intention of improv actors is never to actually produce humour. Humour is usually a bi-product of the improvisation itself. Every professor and every student at the improv school told me that they do not consider themselves comedians and that in trying to come up with a response or in trying to tell the story and often generate inadequate, senseless responses, you end up being funny. There was a game that we played where you had to tell someone some important news and the person would say "Que dijiste?" (What did you say?) and you would have to say something that rhymed with the last phrase you said. So for example, we created a scene where a guy had to tell his best friend that he was in love with the best friends' girlfriend. So he said:
"Guillermo, estoy enamorado de Ale." (Guillermo, I'm in love with Ale)
-"Que dijiste?" (What did you say?)
"Si quieres tomar un cafe?" (I said do you want some 'cafe' [coffee])
And the conversation continues until the other guy hears what he says and his angry reaction to the news is tempered by the fact that he has to rhyme the swear words that he said when he tells off his friend.
I hated that exercise because I had to rhyme in Spanish on my feet and that was NOT fun because at one point I just started inventing words but the professor thought that it was pretty funny so it wasn't that bad.
Because improv requires you to think on your feet, it means that any knowledge you have--even the most random knowledge-- becomes useful. According to a fellow improv student Teresa, she told me that she was learning to cook and she sometimes used knowledge about cooking when she needed vocabulary or needed to invent things in her improv stories. This was particularly necessary when they would have you act as a deaf mute translater as someone explains an arbitrary question like "Why do bees instead of ants make honey?" Obviously, nobody actually knew this which is why the explanation was usually very funny and became even funnier as the translator uses his/her body and face to 'translate' each phrase or word that the person said. Teresa used her cooking knowledge to tell the story and it made absolutely NO sense which is why it was so funny.
Humour as a bi-product adds to the fun of improv and is what keeps the audience entertained. So it is never the trying to be funny, it is to let humour happen organically. In many ways, improv has a strange relationship to humour because it is not like stand-up where you want people to laugh, nor is it like cartoons where you're using humour to communicate a message; humour is not at the center of the art of improv itself but is naturally produced in the development of an improv story.
Improv and Social Change
Keto as an improv group did not have some romantic vision about changing the world but the professor believed that improv was a way of working and changing the way individuals see the world. Nazira, the improv professor explained that the Carpenter exercise is about 'possibilities'. She believes that through that exercise her students will see how many different, interesting possibilities can come from any single idea. She says that when people see the various possibilities coming from the Carpenter story, then they can apply it to their daily lives and open their minds to new things. She said that the carpenter exercise coupled with the falling from the ladder exercise is how improv is a way to 'generar confianza' (generate trust). She told me: "El tema de ayer era la confianza y las posibilidades entonces las posibilidades eran el ejercicio del carpintero no? Cuántas posibilidades hay con una sola cosa? A veces uno en la vida se hace problemas y no puede salir de ellos pero si estás en un estado más positivo, encuentras respuestas y para una pregunta puede haber muchas respuestas. No todo es blanco ni negro. " [Yesterday's theme was trust and possibilities so the possibilities theme was the carpenter exercise right? How many possibilities are there with just one thing? At times one has problems in life and you can't solve them but if you are in a positive state of mind you can find answers and there may be many answers to that one question. Everything isn't black and white]
In response to my question as to what impact does she want improv to have on her audience she said: "Que la gente disfrute... y que la gente sepa que hay más formas de ver la vida y si viendo un grupo de locos que se paran allí, y no saben qué mierda va a pasar, y que [el grupo de gente] se lanzan al vacío y todo el mundo la pasa bién, uno también va a decir “hoy día voy a decir que sí a más cosas no?”...Hoy día voy a aceptar más. Voy a aceptar más al otro, voy a aceptar más a mí. Creo que si se pueden llevar algo a eso sería genial. " [may they (the public) have a enjoy it and let everyone know that there are many more ways of seeing life. And if watching a group of crazy people standing there without knowing what the hell is going to happen next, but those people launch off into an emptiness and have a good time then maybe the public too will say "today I am going to say yes to more things." Today I am going to accept more...I am going to accept someone else more, I am going to accept myself some more. I think that if improv can push them to that place then it would really be great.]
Improvisation has not been in Peru for a really long time but it has become increasingly popular within the last five years. I started taking improv classes with a group called Keto. Doing improv requires complete coordination of your mind and body. The first warm-up exercise was to walk around the room and to point to an object and to call it a different name for each step that you take. This is a means of getting you to rethink what you assume to be 'normal' or 'basic' knowledge and to open your mind to re-creating things.
Then you have a conversation with someone where you must make up a story from what the person says by starting each sentence with "si y..."("yes and..."). For instance, a conversation would start:
Person 1: John went to brush his teeth
Person 2: Yes and then he ate his breakfast
Person 1: yes and he did not finish because the breakfast was not well cooked
Person 2: yes and so he ate his shoe
...
So you basically create a whole new story for about 5 minutes without hesistating at any moment in the conversation or you have to start over and when that happens, your partner usually wants to kill you.
They then have you climb on top of a ladder and fall back into the arms of fellow students standing below you. I didn't have a problem doing that since I had already done bunjee jumping and I felt like there was no real danger involved but some people really couldn't let themselves fall back from the top of the ladder. But then again, I may just be a psycho in love with physical danger.
The purpose of these basic exercises are the following:
1. Mind and body coordination
2. Teamwork
3. Trust
The exercises often seem simple at first but they require you to think on your feet. They also have exercises where they have each student come up with a 2 minute story about any one topic. My first day at class each person had to tell a story about a carpenter but they would change the terms of telling the story once you stood up to talk. So when you get up to tell the story they will say: you must sing a song about the carpenter and the genre of the music is a western...Go!" Or they will tell you that the Carpenter is a Science Fiction movie and you must lay out who directed it, where it was made and give a summary of the movie in 2 minutes.
Director Sergio Paris explained that many scholars, actors or directors often look down on improv until they actually do it and they realise it is even harder to think on your feet in front of a paying audience when there is no script. Improv is probably the hardest form of theater that exists because it is so spontaneous. However, there are actually structures to doing improv that they teach you but they will all tell you the way to be good at it is through practice and experience.
The Relationship between Improv and Humour
So the intention of improv actors is never to actually produce humour. Humour is usually a bi-product of the improvisation itself. Every professor and every student at the improv school told me that they do not consider themselves comedians and that in trying to come up with a response or in trying to tell the story and often generate inadequate, senseless responses, you end up being funny. There was a game that we played where you had to tell someone some important news and the person would say "Que dijiste?" (What did you say?) and you would have to say something that rhymed with the last phrase you said. So for example, we created a scene where a guy had to tell his best friend that he was in love with the best friends' girlfriend. So he said:
"Guillermo, estoy enamorado de Ale." (Guillermo, I'm in love with Ale)
-"Que dijiste?" (What did you say?)
"Si quieres tomar un cafe?" (I said do you want some 'cafe' [coffee])
And the conversation continues until the other guy hears what he says and his angry reaction to the news is tempered by the fact that he has to rhyme the swear words that he said when he tells off his friend.
I hated that exercise because I had to rhyme in Spanish on my feet and that was NOT fun because at one point I just started inventing words but the professor thought that it was pretty funny so it wasn't that bad.
Because improv requires you to think on your feet, it means that any knowledge you have--even the most random knowledge-- becomes useful. According to a fellow improv student Teresa, she told me that she was learning to cook and she sometimes used knowledge about cooking when she needed vocabulary or needed to invent things in her improv stories. This was particularly necessary when they would have you act as a deaf mute translater as someone explains an arbitrary question like "Why do bees instead of ants make honey?" Obviously, nobody actually knew this which is why the explanation was usually very funny and became even funnier as the translator uses his/her body and face to 'translate' each phrase or word that the person said. Teresa used her cooking knowledge to tell the story and it made absolutely NO sense which is why it was so funny.
Humour as a bi-product adds to the fun of improv and is what keeps the audience entertained. So it is never the trying to be funny, it is to let humour happen organically. In many ways, improv has a strange relationship to humour because it is not like stand-up where you want people to laugh, nor is it like cartoons where you're using humour to communicate a message; humour is not at the center of the art of improv itself but is naturally produced in the development of an improv story.
Improv and Social Change
Keto as an improv group did not have some romantic vision about changing the world but the professor believed that improv was a way of working and changing the way individuals see the world. Nazira, the improv professor explained that the Carpenter exercise is about 'possibilities'. She believes that through that exercise her students will see how many different, interesting possibilities can come from any single idea. She says that when people see the various possibilities coming from the Carpenter story, then they can apply it to their daily lives and open their minds to new things. She said that the carpenter exercise coupled with the falling from the ladder exercise is how improv is a way to 'generar confianza' (generate trust). She told me: "El tema de ayer era la confianza y las posibilidades entonces las posibilidades eran el ejercicio del carpintero no? Cuántas posibilidades hay con una sola cosa? A veces uno en la vida se hace problemas y no puede salir de ellos pero si estás en un estado más positivo, encuentras respuestas y para una pregunta puede haber muchas respuestas. No todo es blanco ni negro. " [Yesterday's theme was trust and possibilities so the possibilities theme was the carpenter exercise right? How many possibilities are there with just one thing? At times one has problems in life and you can't solve them but if you are in a positive state of mind you can find answers and there may be many answers to that one question. Everything isn't black and white]
In response to my question as to what impact does she want improv to have on her audience she said: "Que la gente disfrute... y que la gente sepa que hay más formas de ver la vida y si viendo un grupo de locos que se paran allí, y no saben qué mierda va a pasar, y que [el grupo de gente] se lanzan al vacío y todo el mundo la pasa bién, uno también va a decir “hoy día voy a decir que sí a más cosas no?”...Hoy día voy a aceptar más. Voy a aceptar más al otro, voy a aceptar más a mí. Creo que si se pueden llevar algo a eso sería genial. " [may they (the public) have a enjoy it and let everyone know that there are many more ways of seeing life. And if watching a group of crazy people standing there without knowing what the hell is going to happen next, but those people launch off into an emptiness and have a good time then maybe the public too will say "today I am going to say yes to more things." Today I am going to accept more...I am going to accept someone else more, I am going to accept myself some more. I think that if improv can push them to that place then it would really be great.]
Friday, April 06, 2007
The Banana Boat in Lima
I went to the beach on Saturday and had an escapade with a banana boat. You know how the banana boat is being dragged by a speed boat and you have to try to stay on for the entire ride? Well I got on the banana boat and started falling off immediately because you already know that I am not the fattest person in the world. But since Im a stubborn idiot I held on to the boat for dear life.
Then the water started beating against my body. So now I was being dragged alongside the banana boat and the boat was moving at the speed of lightening as I simultaneously used my hand to cling to it for dear life. The force of the water started pushing off my bikini bottom. So then I start hanging on to both my buttcheeks and the side of the boat in fear of being stripped naked in my quest not to be knocked off the boat. But at the same time the people still on the boat were looking at me like Im a psycho. Then I say to myself "Danielle people think you're a psycho because you're grabbing your ass while your body is being dragged by a banana boat..sometimes you gotta cut your losses dude"
Then I start thinking to myself, what if your bikini bottom really falls off and you're pantsless when you get back ON the boat.
So I let go.
And I was immediately clobbered by a giant wave. I then pull my bikini bottom up before the boat comes back to get me. When they come get me they pull me back on and it gave me a really huge wedgy so my buttcheeks were screaming "HELLO " to the world. When I finally get on the boat with my two buttcheeks hanging out, I looked at the other people on the banana boat and said "In Jamaica showing your buttcheeks to strangers is how we say HOLA"
And they burst out laughing..
Then the water started beating against my body. So now I was being dragged alongside the banana boat and the boat was moving at the speed of lightening as I simultaneously used my hand to cling to it for dear life. The force of the water started pushing off my bikini bottom. So then I start hanging on to both my buttcheeks and the side of the boat in fear of being stripped naked in my quest not to be knocked off the boat. But at the same time the people still on the boat were looking at me like Im a psycho. Then I say to myself "Danielle people think you're a psycho because you're grabbing your ass while your body is being dragged by a banana boat..sometimes you gotta cut your losses dude"
Then I start thinking to myself, what if your bikini bottom really falls off and you're pantsless when you get back ON the boat.
So I let go.
And I was immediately clobbered by a giant wave. I then pull my bikini bottom up before the boat comes back to get me. When they come get me they pull me back on and it gave me a really huge wedgy so my buttcheeks were screaming "HELLO " to the world. When I finally get on the boat with my two buttcheeks hanging out, I looked at the other people on the banana boat and said "In Jamaica showing your buttcheeks to strangers is how we say HOLA"
And they burst out laughing..
Monday, March 19, 2007
My First Stand-Up Comedy Routine
Copy and paste this link to see the video of my performance:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1256034188226198379&hl=es
So on March 14, 2007, I performed my very first stand-up comedy routine in front of 200 strangers at the local club "The Satchmo" and competed against 4 other amateur comedians. And I WON!
I was convinced to enter by the director Sergio, an improv director who after my interview with him told me that he was convinced I had it in me to be a stand-up comedian. Doing stand-up comedy in any language is hard. But doing it in Spanish was an absolute and total nightmare to me and even though I told him I would do it, I spent the next 10 days sweating and going to the bathroom regularly. I was SOOO nervous.
Stand-up is one of those things that you either fail or succeed at. There is almost never an in between. The first second you get on stage requires that you have an immediate connection with your audience. It also requires that you sustain their attention for your entire routine. Keeping 200 people interested in you is pretty hard. I am of course extremely proud of myself because I won and have attached pictures so that people can see it. And to confirm my parents' decision to boast about this to as many people as is humanly possible.
So here is the question everybody asks: What did you talk about?
So here is what I did:
There is an assumption by the average South American that every black person is from Brazil. So my routine started with me talking patois/Jamaican dialect which took the audience offguard and got their attention. After speaking in dialect I said "Oops, nobody understood that no?? uh oh!" After that I had the entire audience saying YEAH MAN! and ended by saying "NO I AM NOT FROM BRAZIL!" That was hilarious to them because they were all thinking I was Brazilian that the moment I stepped on stage.
YEAH MAN became the running gag of the show. A running gag is a line that a comedian uses to see whether or not the audience is with him/her. Its an interactive line that the audience repeats with you so you keep their attention throughout your act. You have to find the right balance and know when to use it and how not to overuse it. The line also has to be short and catchy. Luckily yeah man is short and catchy for spanish speakers who pronounced it "Jay man" but it worked.
So I said (in spanish)
everybody having a good time?
and they responded "jay man"
--.wanna have a beer?
-Jay man!
Wanna have sex with me?
---Jay man!
---Very good..thank you so much for that..my phone number is..no kidding.
Then in the routine I went on to say that I blame my mother for everything. I dont blame her becuase I am irresponsible, blaming my mother is a medical recommendation from my psychologist who always said to me "Echale la culpa a tu madre que te pario" That line means blame 'yo momma!'
I explained that I swear in my routine because bad words are the first words you learn when you start to speak another language. Given that I have travelled so much, I have mixed the swears from different countries. (Only spanish speakers can understand this) So I used a sentence where I mixed mexican swears with swears from Spain and I explained that I do this because I respect the equality of all swears. This is how world peace can begin...swearing. I also clarified that I dont actually know what the swears mean, nor where they come from, nor what I am swearing about...
but I swear
....
so please put up with me and my incoherent profanity for the remainder of the show.
The swears were a joke in and of themselves because in the peru context they make absolutely no sense and given that Im combining from swears from different countries, Im not saying profanity..Im talking gibberish.
I continued by explaining that my mother sent me to other countries because she realised that I couldnt learn anything in Jamaica. She sent me to NY to learn to drive, then to Spain to learn to cook and when I came back she was watching the olympics and sent me to Kenya to learn how to run. (I officially apologise to Wangechi for fulfilling the Kenya stereotype).
Anyway, when I came running back from kenya she told me that she was going to send me to Latin America to learn Spanish and when I said no, she used intellectual arguments and psychology..in other words she beat the crap out of me and when I regained consciousness I was in Lima, Peru.
Then I invented that there was a pedestrian street in Lima Centro (there is no pedestrian street there so the audience found it funny that I invented one) and said that I looked for a restaurant to eat. Looking for a restaurant was a joke in and of itself becuase Peru has a reputation of having bad restaurants that give you loose bowel movement for extended periods of time. So I told them how I told my mother I was learning to 'cagar' (to take a dump) for my entire time in Lima until I found a clean restaurant in the invented pedestrian street.
Anyway, I find a restaurant and before I enter the restaurant I was hit on by a giant sausage who of course thought that I was from brazil. The giant sausage story is in a previous post on this blog and was the highlight of the routine. (see Salchicha Gigante)
Being hit on by a giant sausage is a fairly easy story to get people to laugh at. So I exagerrated and made it into a show down between me and the sausage. So when the sausage realised that I was more psycho than he was , he ran away. But then I got really upset that he ran away and was like "A sausage cannot reject me" and the roles were reversed and I started pursuing the giant sausage. So I told the audience to imagine the image of the only Jamaican in Latin America having a show down with a giant sausage in an invented street in lima center. I was yelling at the sausage until I realised that people around me on the imaginary street were hearing me scream "Sausage don't leave me..sausage I love you..sausage give me a chance!"
Then after that, I ran into a family from guatemala--see previous post "Guatemala hospitality" and they loved the story of course.
I ended with the moral of the story being: If you have a run in with a giant sausage, get told off by the someone's wife and don't learn to swear properly in spanish, blame "yo momma!" Jay man!
And that was my presentation in a nut shell. Of course I am not putting up all the jokes told in my routine but once I get the link from the group I will transcribe what I said at each point.
I do want to say that I respect every comedian who has the nerve to stand in front of an audience for hour long shows to make them laugh. It is not easy! If you do not seduce your audience in the first five mins, you have already failed. And a failed routine is a form of severe torture for both the comedian and the audience.
I send my condolences to all comedians who have been booed off stage.
(to the left is a photo of me and the runner up)
(How ironic that I put my winning photo here while I send my condolences to comedians..its kinda like..sucks for you but yay for me right?)
Another thing that came to my attention after my performance was how it is that humour has become totally commercialised. Comedians often tell the stereotypical jokes they tell (including myself with the Kenya jokes) because it assures you an easy laugh. Doing stand-up comedy is not about changing the world because as a comedian you are providing a service that your audience has paid for. So there is a way in which Stand-up comedy has been coopted by capitalism and has become a harder space for creating social change.
Secondly, stand-up comedy is a space of dialogue between the comedian and the audience. It requires you to be totally natural and to make the audience feel like they're in a room with a friend who's telling them a story. You are dependent on the audience's approval and have to choose a topic that the audience is familiar with. People use easy jokes and fall back on stereotypes because they feel that it is 'common knowledge' that the audience can relate to.
I am not saying that it is impossible to do progressive humour that gets people to laugh. But I am tracing the difficulties for stand-up comedians when they prepare a routine.
But also, there are comedians who harbour their own beliefs about distincts group of people anyway so they themselves believe some of the jokes they crack. Comedians have to figure out better ways to make a difference
through stand-up and not just--how can I make people laugh here?
There is a way to do both.
So I guess that I hereby vow to make no more kenya jokes.
Also, part of the reason that certain racist/sexist/homophobic jokes are told is because only certain people have access to stand-up comedy. Out of the five comedians two of us were female and last week and this week there will only be one female comedian per show. It is not that womyn do not have a sense of humour, but it has to do with who monopolises stand-up comedy as a space. In other words, we have to think about stand-up comedy in terms of who owns the space. I will explain why stand-up comedy is male-dominated in another post.
It is empowering to make so many people happy in 12 mins but it is also the most vulnerable I have ever been. To be a comedian is to be completely vulnerable to your audience in some ways. For me being in front of a bunch of strangers doing stand-up is kind of like standing naked in the middle of a highway in front of a speeding truck where you hope the driver will see you in time to jam on his brakes.
Thank God my audience stepped on their brakes!
Enjoy the photos and wish me luck for my next routine.
P.S The picture on the right is a picture of the first person to ever ask for my autograph. Since he was so hot I gave him my phone number..although I think he's gay...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1256034188226198379&hl=es
So on March 14, 2007, I performed my very first stand-up comedy routine in front of 200 strangers at the local club "The Satchmo" and competed against 4 other amateur comedians. And I WON!
I was convinced to enter by the director Sergio, an improv director who after my interview with him told me that he was convinced I had it in me to be a stand-up comedian. Doing stand-up comedy in any language is hard. But doing it in Spanish was an absolute and total nightmare to me and even though I told him I would do it, I spent the next 10 days sweating and going to the bathroom regularly. I was SOOO nervous.
Stand-up is one of those things that you either fail or succeed at. There is almost never an in between. The first second you get on stage requires that you have an immediate connection with your audience. It also requires that you sustain their attention for your entire routine. Keeping 200 people interested in you is pretty hard. I am of course extremely proud of myself because I won and have attached pictures so that people can see it. And to confirm my parents' decision to boast about this to as many people as is humanly possible.
So here is the question everybody asks: What did you talk about?
So here is what I did:
There is an assumption by the average South American that every black person is from Brazil. So my routine started with me talking patois/Jamaican dialect which took the audience offguard and got their attention. After speaking in dialect I said "Oops, nobody understood that no?? uh oh!" After that I had the entire audience saying YEAH MAN! and ended by saying "NO I AM NOT FROM BRAZIL!" That was hilarious to them because they were all thinking I was Brazilian that the moment I stepped on stage.
YEAH MAN became the running gag of the show. A running gag is a line that a comedian uses to see whether or not the audience is with him/her. Its an interactive line that the audience repeats with you so you keep their attention throughout your act. You have to find the right balance and know when to use it and how not to overuse it. The line also has to be short and catchy. Luckily yeah man is short and catchy for spanish speakers who pronounced it "Jay man" but it worked.
So I said (in spanish)
everybody having a good time?
and they responded "jay man"
--.wanna have a beer?
-Jay man!
Wanna have sex with me?
---Jay man!
---Very good..thank you so much for that..my phone number is..no kidding.
Then in the routine I went on to say that I blame my mother for everything. I dont blame her becuase I am irresponsible, blaming my mother is a medical recommendation from my psychologist who always said to me "Echale la culpa a tu madre que te pario" That line means blame 'yo momma!'
I explained that I swear in my routine because bad words are the first words you learn when you start to speak another language. Given that I have travelled so much, I have mixed the swears from different countries. (Only spanish speakers can understand this) So I used a sentence where I mixed mexican swears with swears from Spain and I explained that I do this because I respect the equality of all swears. This is how world peace can begin...swearing. I also clarified that I dont actually know what the swears mean, nor where they come from, nor what I am swearing about...
but I swear
....
so please put up with me and my incoherent profanity for the remainder of the show.
The swears were a joke in and of themselves because in the peru context they make absolutely no sense and given that Im combining from swears from different countries, Im not saying profanity..Im talking gibberish.
I continued by explaining that my mother sent me to other countries because she realised that I couldnt learn anything in Jamaica. She sent me to NY to learn to drive, then to Spain to learn to cook and when I came back she was watching the olympics and sent me to Kenya to learn how to run. (I officially apologise to Wangechi for fulfilling the Kenya stereotype).
Anyway, when I came running back from kenya she told me that she was going to send me to Latin America to learn Spanish and when I said no, she used intellectual arguments and psychology..in other words she beat the crap out of me and when I regained consciousness I was in Lima, Peru.
Then I invented that there was a pedestrian street in Lima Centro (there is no pedestrian street there so the audience found it funny that I invented one) and said that I looked for a restaurant to eat. Looking for a restaurant was a joke in and of itself becuase Peru has a reputation of having bad restaurants that give you loose bowel movement for extended periods of time. So I told them how I told my mother I was learning to 'cagar' (to take a dump) for my entire time in Lima until I found a clean restaurant in the invented pedestrian street.
Anyway, I find a restaurant and before I enter the restaurant I was hit on by a giant sausage who of course thought that I was from brazil. The giant sausage story is in a previous post on this blog and was the highlight of the routine. (see Salchicha Gigante)
Being hit on by a giant sausage is a fairly easy story to get people to laugh at. So I exagerrated and made it into a show down between me and the sausage. So when the sausage realised that I was more psycho than he was , he ran away. But then I got really upset that he ran away and was like "A sausage cannot reject me" and the roles were reversed and I started pursuing the giant sausage. So I told the audience to imagine the image of the only Jamaican in Latin America having a show down with a giant sausage in an invented street in lima center. I was yelling at the sausage until I realised that people around me on the imaginary street were hearing me scream "Sausage don't leave me..sausage I love you..sausage give me a chance!"
Then after that, I ran into a family from guatemala--see previous post "Guatemala hospitality" and they loved the story of course.
I ended with the moral of the story being: If you have a run in with a giant sausage, get told off by the someone's wife and don't learn to swear properly in spanish, blame "yo momma!" Jay man!
And that was my presentation in a nut shell. Of course I am not putting up all the jokes told in my routine but once I get the link from the group I will transcribe what I said at each point.
I do want to say that I respect every comedian who has the nerve to stand in front of an audience for hour long shows to make them laugh. It is not easy! If you do not seduce your audience in the first five mins, you have already failed. And a failed routine is a form of severe torture for both the comedian and the audience.I send my condolences to all comedians who have been booed off stage.
(to the left is a photo of me and the runner up)
(How ironic that I put my winning photo here while I send my condolences to comedians..its kinda like..sucks for you but yay for me right?)
Another thing that came to my attention after my performance was how it is that humour has become totally commercialised. Comedians often tell the stereotypical jokes they tell (including myself with the Kenya jokes) because it assures you an easy laugh. Doing stand-up comedy is not about changing the world because as a comedian you are providing a service that your audience has paid for. So there is a way in which Stand-up comedy has been coopted by capitalism and has become a harder space for creating social change.
Secondly, stand-up comedy is a space of dialogue between the comedian and the audience. It requires you to be totally natural and to make the audience feel like they're in a room with a friend who's telling them a story. You are dependent on the audience's approval and have to choose a topic that the audience is familiar with. People use easy jokes and fall back on stereotypes because they feel that it is 'common knowledge' that the audience can relate to.
I am not saying that it is impossible to do progressive humour that gets people to laugh. But I am tracing the difficulties for stand-up comedians when they prepare a routine.
But also, there are comedians who harbour their own beliefs about distincts group of people anyway so they themselves believe some of the jokes they crack. Comedians have to figure out better ways to make a difference
through stand-up and not just--how can I make people laugh here?There is a way to do both.
So I guess that I hereby vow to make no more kenya jokes.
Also, part of the reason that certain racist/sexist/homophobic jokes are told is because only certain people have access to stand-up comedy. Out of the five comedians two of us were female and last week and this week there will only be one female comedian per show. It is not that womyn do not have a sense of humour, but it has to do with who monopolises stand-up comedy as a space. In other words, we have to think about stand-up comedy in terms of who owns the space. I will explain why stand-up comedy is male-dominated in another post.
It is empowering to make so many people happy in 12 mins but it is also the most vulnerable I have ever been. To be a comedian is to be completely vulnerable to your audience in some ways. For me being in front of a bunch of strangers doing stand-up is kind of like standing naked in the middle of a highway in front of a speeding truck where you hope the driver will see you in time to jam on his brakes.
Thank God my audience stepped on their brakes!
Enjoy the photos and wish me luck for my next routine.
P.S The picture on the right is a picture of the first person to ever ask for my autograph. Since he was so hot I gave him my phone number..although I think he's gay...
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Machupicchu--the tax relief
Since my sister came to visit, we headed straight to Cusco to see the Wonder of the World Machupicchu. But before I show you that I want you to see a picture of Ollytantambo near the Valley of the Sacred Inca. I had never heard of it before but I thought it was really nice and if you're ever in Peru, be sure to check it out.
Photo of Ollytantambo.
From there we headed to Machupicchu. Macchupicchu is referred to as the Lost Inca city because it was built during the 15th century and then abandoned by the Inca Empire because of civil war. Nobody actually lived there for centuries but to get there people would do the Inca Trail which is a four day trek to get to Machupicchu. The Inca Trail has become a huge tourist attraction but I did not fool myself into thinking that my body could handle going all the way up there. Especially if you can get there by bus and train anyway.
Machupicchu sits high at over 7000 feet above sea level and it is hard to believe that the city made of white granite was built using human, manual labour and not the machinery that exists today.
The city was 'discovered' by a North American Professor Hiram Bingham who went to Peru doing research on the Inca Empire in 1910. Well lets not say 'discovered' since peruvians knew that it existed; but since it was abandoned and Peru has SO MANY ruins, they kind of just didn't really pay that much attention to it. They say that only 10% of the ruins in the country has been discovered so that goes to say how much there is to see. Most of the other ruins haven't been found yet because they sit at very high altitudes in the mountains and are so hard to reach. The altitude sickness that you experience is enough to deter you from trying to find these places. You have to move so slowly anyway because of the lack of oxygen when you are climbing some of the ruins around Cusco.
But what I think is a better way of saying this is that the Professor was the first to make Machupicchu public to the rest of the world. The people who lived near Cusco knew that Machupicchu existed but no one actually went there becuase it was so hard to reach. Anyway, with the help of a young indigenous boy as his guide, the Professor made his way to Machupicchu.
When they got to Macchupicchu they found two families living there. And can you believe why the two families were there i.e 2,430 mtrs/some 7970 feet above sea level?
You'll never guess this...
They had moved to Machupicchu--the middle of nowhere--
WOW!
Here is my sister:
And here I am:
Photos taken by Danielle and Shani Roper
Photo of Ollytantambo.From there we headed to Machupicchu. Macchupicchu is referred to as the Lost Inca city because it was built during the 15th century and then abandoned by the Inca Empire because of civil war. Nobody actually lived there for centuries but to get there people would do the Inca Trail which is a four day trek to get to Machupicchu. The Inca Trail has become a huge tourist attraction but I did not fool myself into thinking that my body could handle going all the way up there. Especially if you can get there by bus and train anyway.
Machupicchu sits high at over 7000 feet above sea level and it is hard to believe that the city made of white granite was built using human, manual labour and not the machinery that exists today.
The city was 'discovered' by a North American Professor Hiram Bingham who went to Peru doing research on the Inca Empire in 1910. Well lets not say 'discovered' since peruvians knew that it existed; but since it was abandoned and Peru has SO MANY ruins, they kind of just didn't really pay that much attention to it. They say that only 10% of the ruins in the country has been discovered so that goes to say how much there is to see. Most of the other ruins haven't been found yet because they sit at very high altitudes in the mountains and are so hard to reach. The altitude sickness that you experience is enough to deter you from trying to find these places. You have to move so slowly anyway because of the lack of oxygen when you are climbing some of the ruins around Cusco.
But what I think is a better way of saying this is that the Professor was the first to make Machupicchu public to the rest of the world. The people who lived near Cusco knew that Machupicchu existed but no one actually went there becuase it was so hard to reach. Anyway, with the help of a young indigenous boy as his guide, the Professor made his way to Machupicchu.
When they got to Macchupicchu they found two families living there. And can you believe why the two families were there i.e 2,430 mtrs/some 7970 feet above sea level?
You'll never guess this...
They had moved to Machupicchu--the middle of nowhere--
to
avoid
paying
taxes.
...avoid
paying
taxes.
?
??
???
??
???
?!
WOW!
Is anyone flabberghasted by this?? Because I really am!!
I mean I understand that times were hard but come on!! I guess if you thought Jamaicans were bad, or people in the States were bad about filing taxes, those two indigenous families just kinda took the cake for me.
I guess Machupicchu is not only one of the 7 Wonders of the World, it may just be the best way to escape the IRS.
Anyway below are the pictures of Machupicchu..until you go there, you just can't believe it exists.
I mean I understand that times were hard but come on!! I guess if you thought Jamaicans were bad, or people in the States were bad about filing taxes, those two indigenous families just kinda took the cake for me.
I guess Machupicchu is not only one of the 7 Wonders of the World, it may just be the best way to escape the IRS.
Anyway below are the pictures of Machupicchu..until you go there, you just can't believe it exists.
Here is my sister:
And here I am:
Photos taken by Danielle and Shani Roper
Sunday, February 25, 2007
The Best of Gabriela Acher
Unlike Nicaragua and the rest of Central America, the Argentina Political Humour circle not only has a wider variety of humour, but it also has a substantial, recognized presence of feminist comedians and humourists. The most famous of feminist comedians is Maitena, a cartoonist whose humour is directed towards deconstructing and ridiculing notions of gender. There are also several upcoming stand-up comedians such as Nathalia Carulias and Dahlia Gutman who talk about notions of gender in their work. In the interest of clarification, there is a difference between a female humourist presence and a feminist humourist presence. The humourists that I am labling as feminist, are those who identify as feminist and describe their work as feminist. Argentina has a presence of both feminist and female humourists in the political humour industry.But one feminist humourist that drew my attention when I got to Buenos Aires was the actress and writer Gabriela Acher. Acher has several books that deal with gender, relationships, love, sexuality and motherhood. Some of her books include “La Guerra de Los Sexos Está Por Acabar” [The Battle of the Sexes is about to End], “Si Soy Tan Inteligente Por Qué Me Enamoro Como Idiota” [If I Am So Smart, Why do I Fall in Love like An Idiot] and my absolute favourite “Algo Sobre Mi Madre (Todo Sería Demasiado) [Something About my Mother (Everything would be Too Much).
A self-proclaimed feminist, Acher uses her work to dispel the notion that Feminist humour is ‘anti-man’ and to talk about the challenges that women face throughout childhood until adulthood all in the name of fulfilling patriarchal constructions of womanhood. She uses her childhood experiences with her mother, growing up in a Jewish family and then traces her own experiences to when she too becomes a mother. I liked the fact that she actually took the time to talk about motherhood because a book on motherhood is typically not considered a ‘feminist’ topic. Acher demonstrates that indeed it is…
Lets take a look at her book "Algo Sobre Mi Madre Todo Sería Demasiado":
The book is a satirical analysis of the Freud’s theory that our mothers are to blame for everything. It suggests that you can never please your mother who will forever be your biggest critic; but in public a mother’s pride will proclaim that no one is as good as her child. The story of her Jewish upbringing begins when her older sister finds her crying hysterically as a little girl and she explains that she is crying because she believes her father is seeing other children. Her mother takes her to a psychiatrist and at the end of the interview, the psychiatrist concludes that it is the mother and not Gabriela who is in need of psychiatric help. After that her mother stops believing in psychology.
Anyway, I can't go through the entire book but I wanted to leave some of my favourite excerpts with you according to the themes that she discusses:
1.Over-protection
Mi mama comenzó a preocuparse por mí el día en que nací. Cuando estaba en la cuna, entraba al cuarto cada diez minutos, para ver si yo estaba respirando. My mother began to worry about me the day I was born. When I was in the crib, she would enter the room every ten minutes to check if I was breathing.
Cuando tenía diez años, entraba a mi cuarto para ver si yo estaba estudiando. When I was ten years old, she entered my room to check if I was studying.
Cuando tenía diecisiete, entraba a mi cuarto para ver si yo estaba teniendo sexo, sola o acompañada. When I was 17, she entered my room to check if I was having sex—alone or with someone else. (pg. 36)
2. Your mother is your biggest critic:
It was impossible to please her mother because her mother was never happy with herself. She believed that her mother was Jewish and did not accept Jesus as the messiah because her mother would have liked to have personally carried the cross. There was always something to complain about, something to be unhappy about or something to feel guilty about.
She explained this as part of being Jewish but reiterates throughout the book that you do not have to have a Jewish mother to have a mother with Jewish characteristics. This is borne out in her chapter “No hace falta ser judía para ser una madre judía” You don’t need to be Jewish to be a Jewish mother. A mother’s criticism is universal: Here are some of the most historic lines by mothers:
¡Ponete los calzoncillos adentro, como todo el mundo! Wear your briefs on the inside like everyone else!
–Superman’s mother
No sé de qué te reís con lo gorda que estás. I don’t know what you’re laughing at with all that weight you have on.
---Mona Lisa’s mother
¿Por qué nunca escuchás a tu madre? Why don’t you ever listen to your mother?
--Ludwig Van Beethoven’s mother
¿Cuándo vas a pintar algo que se entienda? When are you going to paint something that somebody can understand?
---Pablo Picasso’s mother
¡Operate esa nariz de una buena vez! Operate on that nose for once!
---Barbara Streisand’s mother
¿Todo el tiempo jugando con esa estúpida cometa? ¡Entrá inmediatamente y ponete a hacer los deberes! Playing with that stupid comet all the time? Go inside and do your homework!
---Benjamin Franklin’s mother
¿Cómo que vas a viajar a la luna? ¿Y si está llena de antisemitas? What do you mean you’re going to travel to the moon? And if its full of anti-semites?
---A Jewish Astronauts mother
¿Y a eso le llamas comida? You call that food?
Gandhi’s mother
¿Otra vez haciendo garabatos? ¿Por qué no te peinás un poco y salís con alguna buena chica? Doodling again? Why don’t you comb your hair a little and go out with a nice girl?
--Albert Einstein’s mother
¡Cambiate el calzoncillo antes de salir a la calle! ¿Y si tenés un accidente? Change your underwear before you go on the road..what if you have an accident?
---James Dean’s mother
¡Nunca vas a llegar a ningún lado si estás siempre en las nubes! You’re never gonna get anywhere if you’re always in the clouds!
--Amelia Earhart’s mother (pgs 117-119)
3. The pressure to get married.
She said that the pressure started on mother’s day when she bought her mother and gift and said “Happy Mother’s Day!” and her mother replied “Pity I can’t say the same to you!” If she didn’t get married then her mother would never have a grandchild. Her mother sought to introduce her to the dating scene by encouraging her to put an ad in the newspaper to look for a husband. Some of the ads went like this:
Joven Profesional de 29 busca compañera con quien ir a la sinagoga, encender las velas de shabat, celebrar las festividades, construir la Zucá juntos, asistir a Bar-Mitzvas. Tu religion no es importante. Young Professional, Male, 29 yrs old, looking for a partner to go with him to the synagogue, light the Shabat candles, celebrate the festivities, build the Zucá together, go to Bar Mitzvas together. Your religion is not important.
Joven Judío atractivo, 38. Nada oculto. Nada de equipaje. Nada de Personalidad. Young attractive male Jew. 38 yrs old. Nothing to hide. No baggage. No Personality.
Soltero de 29. Me gusta la música disco, escalar montañas, esquiar, correr pista y campo. Tengo una leve cojera. Single 29 yr old male. I like disco music, to hike mountains, skiing, long distance and cross country running. I have a slight limp.
Feminista judía radical. Busco compañero que acepte mi independencia. Aunque probablemente no lo hagas; ¡mejor olvídalo! Jewish radical feminist. I am looking for a partner who accepts my independence. Even though you probably won’t actually accept it...you know what, forget it.
Soy un sensible joven príncipe judío a quién puedes abrir tu Corazon, y con quien podrás compartir tus pensamientos y secretos más profundos. Confía en mí. Comprenderé tus inseguridades. Abstenerse gorditas, por favor. I am a sensitive Jewish prince to whom you can open your heart and with whom you can share your deepest thoughts and secrets. Trust me. I will understand your insecurities. Fat women stay away please.
The purpose of the advertisement itself explains how marriage has become completely commercialized and both men and women fall into the trap of needing to complete themselves by finding the right partner.
Acher then takes us through what she herself begins to think when she becomes a mother. What was interesting about her experiences as a mother is that while she does not say so explicitly, her own experiences display the difficulties of single motherhood as she tries to raise a son. She starts having what she labels as a mother's thoughts:
Pensamientos Maternos A Mother's thoughts
Honrarás a tu madre más que a ti misma. You shall honour your mother more than yourself
Reíte ahora que ya vas a llorar mañana. Laugh now, you’ll cry tomorrow
Vos casate que el amor viene después. Just get married, love will come afterwards
No solo hay que ser decente, hay que parecerlo. Don’t just be decent, look decent too.
Lo haces para mortificarme. You do it to mortify/annoy/bother me.
Tengo palpitaciones. I have palpitations
Abrigate que tengo frio. Please put on your jacket, I am cold.
¡Ya vas a ver cuando tengas tus propios hijos! You’ll see when you have your own children.
Si Dios hubiera creído en la permisividad, nos hubiera dado “Las diez sugerencias” If God believed in ‘permission’ he would have given us The Ten Suggestions”
No te divertirás por nada del mundo. You will not enjoy anything in the world.
She also presents other themes in her book such as sexuality, aging and the body image via discussions about the boom of plastic surgery in Latin America. She explains at one point that plastic surgery is so rampant that you must look at women’s child to figure out what she (the mother) looked like before the surgery.
Now of course, I felt like Acher fell into the tired 'fat jokes' or even ableist people jokes at points in the book but she puts them out there because these are issues that come up when people are looking for partners and also things that mothers say to their children--especially to their daughters. So I could forgive her for it because of the other great things she had in the book itself.
Acher told me that being a humourist is important simply because people can never read her work and believe that feminists do not have a sense of humour.
I hope that some day they will translate her book into English so that all you English-speakers our there can share in the feminist laughter.
All excerpts taken from the book "Algo Sobre Mi Madre Todo Seria Demasiado"
Find photo of Gabriela Acher above
©Danielle Roper
Honrarás a tu madre más que a ti misma. You shall honour your mother more than yourself
Reíte ahora que ya vas a llorar mañana. Laugh now, you’ll cry tomorrow
Vos casate que el amor viene después. Just get married, love will come afterwards
No solo hay que ser decente, hay que parecerlo. Don’t just be decent, look decent too.
Lo haces para mortificarme. You do it to mortify/annoy/bother me.
Tengo palpitaciones. I have palpitations
Abrigate que tengo frio. Please put on your jacket, I am cold.
¡Ya vas a ver cuando tengas tus propios hijos! You’ll see when you have your own children.
Si Dios hubiera creído en la permisividad, nos hubiera dado “Las diez sugerencias” If God believed in ‘permission’ he would have given us The Ten Suggestions”
No te divertirás por nada del mundo. You will not enjoy anything in the world.
In the second section of her book we see her turn into a ‘technological mother’ when she has her own son. . I say technological because she describes her contact with her own son as stable communication by email even though they live in the same house. By showing how she too evolves into a ‘technological’ version of her mother-who is equally impossible to please- you leave the story viewing motherhood in a human way. The very thing her mother used to do, she begins to do with her own son. So her mother is not demonized in the story…instead at the end of the book you end up thinking that it is not the mother who is impossible to please, rather it is the child.
In my interview with Acher, she explained that writing a story about her mother was important to her because so many people have a love-hate relationship with their mothers. She explained to me that while the entire story was invented, many people who have read her book can completely relate to difficulties with their mother and the absolute horror of discovering how they too become their mother when they have children. For her, humour was not the message of tracing stories of Jewish motherhood, it is the means of doing so. So when you read her book, you can laugh at your own mother and laugh at yourself.
In my interview with Acher, she explained that writing a story about her mother was important to her because so many people have a love-hate relationship with their mothers. She explained to me that while the entire story was invented, many people who have read her book can completely relate to difficulties with their mother and the absolute horror of discovering how they too become their mother when they have children. For her, humour was not the message of tracing stories of Jewish motherhood, it is the means of doing so. So when you read her book, you can laugh at your own mother and laugh at yourself.
She also presents other themes in her book such as sexuality, aging and the body image via discussions about the boom of plastic surgery in Latin America. She explains at one point that plastic surgery is so rampant that you must look at women’s child to figure out what she (the mother) looked like before the surgery.
Now of course, I felt like Acher fell into the tired 'fat jokes' or even ableist people jokes at points in the book but she puts them out there because these are issues that come up when people are looking for partners and also things that mothers say to their children--especially to their daughters. So I could forgive her for it because of the other great things she had in the book itself.
Acher told me that being a humourist is important simply because people can never read her work and believe that feminists do not have a sense of humour.
I hope that some day they will translate her book into English so that all you English-speakers our there can share in the feminist laughter.
All excerpts taken from the book "Algo Sobre Mi Madre Todo Seria Demasiado"
Find photo of Gabriela Acher above
©Danielle Roper
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