Pe-Stand Up Comedy "Dodit Mulyanto"

Dodit Mulyanto (lahir di Blitar, Jawa Timur, 30 Juni 1985; umur 30 tahun) adalah pelawak tunggal berkebangsaan Indonesia. Namanya mulai dikenal secara luas setelah dia mengikuti kompetisi stand up comedy Indonesia (SUCI) di Kompas TV. Ciri khas yang paling mudah diingat dalam penampilan Dodit saat di panggung adalah pembawaannya yang kalem dan membawa biola, meski kadang tidak dimainkan.

Ciri khas

Sebagai komedian ia selalu membawa karakter khas nya sebagai apa yang disebut "Pria Jawa yang memegang erat budaya Eropa". Selain itu dalam banyak penampilannya ia selalu membawa biola sebagai penunjang penampilannya.Ia juga memiliki ciri khas lain seperti membuka penampilannya dengankata kata “Hai guys… Selamat malam penggemar, masyarakat, penduduk, khalayakramai” dan melontarkan gombalan (rayuan) kepada salah satu penonton perempuan seperti" Ini panah cinta buat kamu, iya kamu…". Dodit selalu menggambarkan dirinya sebagai seseorang yang memiliki masa kecil yang senang bermain di sawah dan hal ini terkada
ng dimasukkannya kedalam materi komedinya. Selain itu, ia memiliki kebiasaan unik sebelum tampil dalam shownya: sepuluh menit sebelum tampil ia menarik nafas panjang, melakukan gerakan ala tai chi, lantas berteriak-teriak, lima menit kemudian ia minum air putih banyak-banyak lalu duduk diam tanpa mau diganggu. Sejak SUCI 4 Show 8, Raditya Dika menjadi sasaran Dodit ketika ia sedang bercanda.

LENNY BRUCE

Leonard Alfred Schneider (October 13, 1925 – August 3, 1966), better known by his stage name Lenny Bruce, was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, and screenwriter. He was renowned for his open, free-style and critical form of comedy which integrated satire, politics, religion, sex, and vulgarity. His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was followed by a posthumous pardon, the first in New York State history, by then-Governor George Pataki in 2003. He paved the way for future outspoken counterculture-era comedians, and his trial for obscenity is seen as a landmark for freedom of speech in the United States.

Early life

Lenny Bruce was born Leonard Alfred Schneider in Mineola, New York, grew up in nearby Bellmore, and attended Wellington C. Mepham High School His parents divorced when he was five years old (the documentary Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth claims he was eight years old), and Lenny lived with various relatives over the next decade. His British-born father, Myron (Mickey) Schneider, was a shoe clerk and Lenny saw him very infrequently. The 1940 census shows Myron (34) and Dorothy (36) Schneider and son, Leonard (14), living on Long Island at 710 Hughes Street, Bellmore, New York. Mickey later moved to Arcadia, California and became a podiatrist. Bruce's mother, Sally Marr (real name Sadie Schneider, born Sadie Kitchenberg), was a stage performer and had an enormous influence on Bruce's career.
After spending time working on a farm, Bruce joined the United States Navy at the age of 16 in 1942, and saw active duty during World War II aboard the USS Brooklyn (CL-40) fighting in Northern Africa, Palermo, Italy in 1943 and Anzio, Italy in 1944. In May 1945, after a comedic performance for his ship-mates in which he was dressed in drag, his commanding officers became upset. He defiantly convinced his ship's medical officer that he was experiencing homosexual urges. This led to his Dishonorable Discharge in July 1945. However, he had not admitted to or been found guilty of any breach of naval regulations and successfully applied to have his discharge changed to "Under Honorable Conditions ... by reason of unsuitability for the naval service".In 1959, while taping the first episode of Hugh Hefner's Playboy's Penthouse, Bruce talked about his Navy experience and showed a tattoo he received in Malta in 1942.
After a short stint in California spent living with his father, Bruce settled in New York City, hoping to establish himself as a comedian. However, he found it difficult to differentiate himself from the thousands of other show business hopefuls who populated the city. One locale where they congregated was Hanson's, the diner where Bruce first met the comedian Joe Ancis who had a profound influence on his approach to comedy. Many of Bruce's later routines reflected his meticulous schooling at the hands of Ancis. According to Bruce's biographer, Albert Goldman, Ancis' humor involved stream-of-consciousness sexual fantasies, references to jazz, and stories of Jewish domesticity.
Lenny took the stage as "Lenny Marsalle" one evening at the Victory Club, as a stand-in master of ceremonies for one of his mother's shows. His ad-libs earned him some laughs. Soon afterward, in 1947, just after changing his last name to Bruce, he earned $12 and a free spaghetti dinner for his first stand-up performance in Brooklyn, New York. He was later a guest — and was introduced by his mother, who called herself "Sally Bruce" — on the Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts radio program, doing a Sid Caesar-inspired bit "The Bavarian Mimic" featuring impressions of American movie stars (e.g., Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson).

Career

Bruce's early comedy career included writing the screenplays for Dance Hall Racket in 1953, which featured Bruce, his wife, Honey Harlow, and mother, Sally Marr, in roles; Dream Follies in 1954, a low-budget burlesque romp; and a children's film, The Rocket Man, in 1954. He also released four albums of original material on Berkeley-based Fantasy Records, with rants, comic routines, and satirical interviews on the themes that made him famous: jazz, moral philosophy, politics, patriotism, religion, law, race, abortion, drugs, the Ku Klux Klan, and Jewishness. These albums were later compiled and re-released as The Lenny Bruce Originals. Two later records were produced and sold by Bruce himself, including a 10-inch album of the 1961 San Francisco performances that started his legal troubles. Starting in the late 1950s, other unissued Bruce material was released by Alan Douglas, Frank Zappa and Phil Spector, as well as Fantasy. Bruce developed the complexity and tone of his material in Enrico Banducci's North Beach nightclub, "The hungry i," where Mort Sahl had earlier made a name for himself.
Branded a "sick comic" - though it was the perceived "sickness" of modern society that he was railing about - Lenny was essentially blacklisted from television, and, when he did appear thanks to sympathetic fans like Steve Allen or Hugh Hefner, it was with great concessions to Broadcast Standards and Practices. Jokes that might offend, like a bit on airplane glue-sniffing teens done live for "The Steve Allen Show" in 1959, had to be typed out and pre-approved by network officials.
His growing fame led to appearances on the nationally televised Steve Allen Show, where he made his debut with an unscripted comment on the recent marriage of Elizabeth Taylor to Eddie Fisher, wondering, "will Elizabeth Taylor become bat mitzvah?" On February 3, 1961, in the midst of a severe blizzard, he gave a famous performance at Carnegie Hall in New York. It was recorded and later released as a three-disc set, titled The Carnegie Hall Concert. In the liner notes, Albert Goldman described it as follows:

This was the moment that an obscure yet rapidly rising young comedian named Lenny Bruce chose to give one of the greatest performances of his career. ... The performance contained in this album is that of a child of the jazz age. Lenny worshipped the gods of Spontaneity, Candor and Free Association. He fancied himself an oral jazzman. His ideal was to walk out there like Charlie Parker, take that mike in his hand like a horn and blow, blow, blow everything that came into his head just as it came into his head with nothing censored, nothing translated, nothing mediated, until he was pure mind, pure head sending out brainwaves like radio waves into the heads of every man and woman seated in that vast hall. Sending, sending, sending, he would finally reach a point of clairvoyance where he was no longer a performer but rather a medium transmitting messages that just came to him from out there — from recall, fantasy, prophecy.
A point at which, like the practitioners of automatic writing, his tongue would outrun his mind and he would be saying things he didn't plan to say, things that surprised, delighted him, cracked him up — as if he were a spectator at his own performance!

Personal life

Bruce met his future wife, Honey Harlow, a stripper from Baltimore, Maryland, in 1951. They were married that same year, and Bruce was determined to have her end her work as a stripper.
In 1953, Bruce and Harlow eventually left New York for the West Coast, where they got work as a double act at the Cup and Saucer in Los Angeles, California. Bruce then went on to join the bill at the club Strip City. Harlow found employment at the Colony Club, which was widely known to be the best burlesque club in Los Angeles at the time.
In late 1954, Bruce left Strip City and found work within the San Fernando Valley at a variety of strip clubs. As the master of ceremonies, his job was to introduce the strippers while performing his own ever-evolving material. The clubs of the Valley provided the perfect environment for Bruce to create new routines: according to Bruce's primary biographer, Albert Goldman, it was "precisely at the moment when he sank to the bottom of the barrel and started working the places that were the lowest of the low" that he suddenly broke free of "all the restraints and inhibitions and disabilities that formerly had kept him just mediocre and began to blow with a spontaneous freedom and resourcefulness that resembled the style and inspiration of his new friends and admirers, the jazz musicians of the modernist school."
Honey and Lenny's daughter Kitty Bruce was born in 1955.He had an affair with the jazz singer Annie Ross in the late 1950s. In 1959, Lenny's divorce from Honey was finalized.
Bruce dated actress Faye Dunaway for a time in the 1960s.

Belajar Mudah Standup Comedy

Standup comey berbeda dengan Joke Telling. Ciri khusus stand-up comedy adalah materinya tidak nyomot, tapi hasil dari pemikirannya sendiri. Sedangkan joke telling adalah melucu sambil melemparkan anekdot, tebak-tebakan, lelucon yang ia kumpulkan dari berbagai sumber, misalnya dari internet, buku, broadcast message, dan lain-lain.

Di Indonesia sendiri,jenis komedi ini sebenarnya sudah ada sejak dahulu. Nama-nama seperti Taufik Savalas (Stasiun Trans tv), Butet Kertaradjasa, dan Ramon P. Tommybend. Dan dari perkembangan terakhir muncul nama baru seperti Raditya Dika,Sammy Notaslimboy,Panji Pragiwaksono,dan masih banyak nama nama yang tidak mungkin saya sebutkan disini.

Belajar Standup Comedy sebenarnya bukan lah hal yang sulit jika kita betul betul serius dalam mempelajari teknik tekniknya. Saya sendiri sedang belajar jenis komedi yang membutuhkan kejelian kita dalam menangkap fenomena fenomena yang terjadi untuk kemudian di susun menjadi sebuah materi ini .Di dalam materi standup comedy itu sendiri ada yang di sebut dengan joke atau lelucon. Apa itu joke ? joke itu terdiri dari 2 bagian,yaitu set-up dan punchline. satuan materi yang terdiri dari set-up dan punchline disebut dengan bit.

Set-up adalah bagian yang tidak lucu dari sebuah bit, biasanya premis atau pengantar dari bit tersebut ke bagian yang lucu.

Punchline adalah bagian yang lucu cari sebuah bit. Biasanya membalikan premis atau memberikan sesuatu yang mengejutkan sebagai penutup dari set-up atau premis tadi. Karena efek mengejutkannya itu maka disebut PUNCH-line. Kalimatnya harus "nonjok".

Bit : Saya itu paling suka sama cewek yang jago masak. Menurut saya cewek yang jago masak itu seksi. Seksi konsumsi.

Set-up disini adalah Saya itu paling suka sama cewek yang jago masak. Menurut saya cewek yang jago masak itu seksi. Saya mengarahkan penonton untuk mengharapkan sesuatu yang seksi dari cewek yang jago masak. Dan di akhir bit saya menggunakan kata seksi konsumsi. Penonton yang tidak siap dengan perubahan tersebut merasa tergelitik dan akhirnya timbulah tawa.

One Liner
Bit singkat yang hanya terdiri dari satu sampai tiga kalimat. One liner merupakan teknik paling simpel di dalam stand up comedy, tetapi selain simpel ini juga memerlukan pemikiran yang lebih keras daripada teknik lainnya



Akhir akhir ini, Standup Comedy begitu popular di jagad hiburan Indonesia. Standup Comedy adalah Sebuah genre di dalam komedi, biasanya satu orang di atas panggung melakukan monolog yang lucu dan memberikan pengamatan, pendapat, atau pengalaman pribadinya. Mengutarakan keresahan, mengangkat kenyataan, memotret kehidupan sosial masyarakat, dan menyuguhkannya kembali kepada masyarakat dengan jenaka.

Standup comey berbeda dengan Joke Telling. Ciri khusus stand-up comedy adalah materinya tidak nyomot, tapi hasil dari pemikirannya sendiri. Sedangkan joke telling adalah melucu sambil melemparkan anekdot, tebak-tebakan, lelucon yang ia kumpulkan dari berbagai sumber, misalnya dari internet, buku, broadcast message, dan lain-lain.

Di Indonesia sendiri,jenis komedi ini sebenarnya sudah ada sejak dahulu. Nama-nama seperti Taufik Savalas, Butet Kertaradjasa, dan Ramon P. Tommybend. Dan dari perkembangan terakhir muncul nama baru seperti Raditya Dika,Sammy Notaslimboy,Panji Pragiwaksono,dan masih banyak nama nama yang tidak mungkin saya sebutkan disini.

Belajar Standup Comedy sebenarnya bukan lah hal yang sulit jika kita betul betul serius dalam mempelajari teknik tekniknya. Saya sendiri sedang belajar jenis komedi yang membutuhkan kejelian kita dalam menangkap fenomena fenomena yang terjadi untuk kemudian di susun menjadi sebuah materi ini .Di dalam materi standup comedy itu sendiri ada yang di sebut dengan joke atau lelucon. Apa itu joke ? joke itu terdiri dari 2 bagian,yaitu set-up dan punchline. satuan materi yang terdiri dari set-up dan punchline disebut dengan bit.

Set-up adalah bagian yang tidak lucu dari sebuah bit, biasanya premis atau pengantar dari bit tersebut ke bagian yang lucu.

Punchline adalah bagian yang lucu cari sebuah bit. Biasanya membalikan premis atau memberikan sesuatu yang mengejutkan sebagai penutup dari set-up atau premis tadi. Karena efek mengejutkannya itu maka disebut PUNCH-line. Kalimatnya harus "nonjok".

Sebagai contoh sederhana nya

Bit : Saya itu paling suka sama cewek yang jago masak. Menurut saya cewek yang jago masak itu seksi. Seksi konsumsi.

Set-up disini adalah Saya itu paling suka sama cewek yang jago masak. Menurut saya cewek yang jago masak itu seksi. Saya mengarahkan penonton untuk mengharapkan sesuatu yang seksi dari cewek yang jago masak. Dan di akhir bit saya menggunakan kata seksi konsumsi. Penonton yang tidak siap dengan perubahan tersebut merasa tergelitik dan akhirnya timbulah tawa.

Dan di standup comedy itu ada beberapa teknik teknik yang harus di kuasai oleh comic atau standup comedian. Berikut ini beberapa di antaranya


One Liner

Bit singkat yang hanya terdiri dari satu sampai tiga kalimat. One liner merupakan teknik paling simpel di dalam stand up comedy, tetapi selain simpel ini juga memerlukan pemikiran yang lebih keras daripada teknik lainnya

Contoh one liner :

Set up: Selamat malam, gimana penampilan saya hari ini?

Punch line: Udah kayak Bunda Dorce belum?


Rule Of Three

Sedangkan rule of three adalah teknik penggunaan tiga kalimat, dua kalimat awal digunakan sebagai set up, satu kalimat terakhir digunakan sebagai punch line.


Contoh rule of three:

Set up 1: Ngajarin Messi untuk main bola itu kayak ngajarin ahmad dani bikin lagu.

Set up 2: Ngajarin Deddy cara main sulap.

Punch line: Atau ngajarin Syahrini cara bedakan.




Akhir akhir ini, Standup Comedy begitu popular di jagad hiburan Indonesia. Standup Comedy adalah Sebuah genre di dalam komedi, biasanya satu orang di atas panggung melakukan monolog yang lucu dan memberikan pengamatan, pendapat, atau pengalaman pribadinya. Mengutarakan keresahan, mengangkat kenyataan, memotret kehidupan sosial masyarakat, dan menyuguhkannya kembali kepada masyarakat dengan jenaka.

Standup comey berbeda dengan Joke Telling. Ciri khusus stand-up comedy adalah materinya tidak nyomot, tapi hasil dari pemikirannya sendiri. Sedangkan joke telling adalah melucu sambil melemparkan anekdot, tebak-tebakan, lelucon yang ia kumpulkan dari berbagai sumber, misalnya dari internet, buku, broadcast message, dan lain-lain.

Di Indonesia sendiri,jenis komedi ini sebenarnya sudah ada sejak dahulu. Nama-nama seperti Taufik Savalas, Butet Kertaradjasa, dan Ramon P. Tommybend. Dan dari perkembangan terakhir muncul nama baru seperti Raditya Dika,Sammy Notaslimboy,Panji Pragiwaksono,dan masih banyak nama nama yang tidak mungkin saya sebutkan disini.

Belajar Standup Comedy sebenarnya bukan lah hal yang sulit jika kita betul betul serius dalam mempelajari teknik tekniknya. Saya sendiri sedang belajar jenis komedi yang membutuhkan kejelian kita dalam menangkap fenomena fenomena yang terjadi untuk kemudian di susun menjadi sebuah materi ini .Di dalam materi standup comedy itu sendiri ada yang di sebut dengan joke atau lelucon. Apa itu joke ? joke itu terdiri dari 2 bagian,yaitu set-up dan punchline. satuan materi yang terdiri dari set-up dan punchline disebut dengan bit.

Set-up adalah bagian yang tidak lucu dari sebuah bit, biasanya premis atau pengantar dari bit tersebut ke bagian yang lucu.

Punchline adalah bagian yang lucu cari sebuah bit. Biasanya membalikan premis atau memberikan sesuatu yang mengejutkan sebagai penutup dari set-up atau premis tadi. Karena efek mengejutkannya itu maka disebut PUNCH-line. Kalimatnya harus "nonjok".

Sebagai contoh sederhana nya

Bit : Saya itu paling suka sama cewek yang jago masak. Menurut saya cewek yang jago masak itu seksi. Seksi konsumsi.

Set-up disini adalah Saya itu paling suka sama cewek yang jago masak. Menurut saya cewek yang jago masak itu seksi. Saya mengarahkan penonton untuk mengharapkan sesuatu yang seksi dari cewek yang jago masak. Dan di akhir bit saya menggunakan kata seksi konsumsi. Penonton yang tidak siap dengan perubahan tersebut merasa tergelitik dan akhirnya timbulah tawa.

Dan di standup comedy itu ada beberapa teknik teknik yang harus di kuasai oleh comic atau standup comedian. Berikut ini beberapa di antaranya


One Liner

Bit singkat yang hanya terdiri dari satu sampai tiga kalimat. One liner merupakan teknik paling simpel di dalam stand up comedy, tetapi selain simpel ini juga memerlukan pemikiran yang lebih keras daripada teknik lainnya

Contoh one liner :

Set up: Selamat malam, gimana penampilan saya hari ini?

Punch line: Udah kayak Bunda Dorce belum?

Rule Of Three

Sedangkan rule of three adalah teknik penggunaan tiga kalimat, dua kalimat awal digunakan sebagai set up, satu kalimat terakhir digunakan sebagai punch line.

Contoh rule of three:

Set up 1: Ngajarin Messi untuk main bola itu kayak ngajarin ahmad dani bikin lagu.

Set up 2: Ngajarin Deddy cara main sulap.

Punch line: Atau ngajarin Syahrini cara bedakan.

Act Out

Menggunakan gerakan sebagai pengganti kalimat. Biasanya act out memiliki tingkat keberhasilan yang tinggi jika digunakan sebagai punch line.

Contoh act out:

Set up: Ada cowok keren cuy, pake handphone touch screen.

Punch line: Tapi pake ludah. *sambil memainkan screen hp dengan jari yang telah dibasahi ludah, seperti ketika menghitung uang.

Call Back

Menurut saya teknik ini adalah yang paling sulit untuk dilakukan. call back itu adalah teknik yang menggunakan punch line pada bit-bit sebelumnya sebagai punch line pada bit sekarang. Sehingga contoh susunan penampilan stand up berbentuk seperti berikut:

Set up 1 – punch line 1, set up 2 – punch line 2, set up 3 – punch line 1.

Contoh call back yang digunakan oleh Ernest Prakasa salah seorang comic terkenal:

Bit 1: Sekarang era digital, dan menurut gue bohong lewat BBM atau SMS itu lebih gampang daripada bohong face to face. Salah satu kebohongan paling sering dilakukan orang bahkan cuma 3 huruf: “OTW”. Temen lo udah BBM lo dengan panik: “PING!!! Bro, dimana lo, gue udah sampe nih!”, trus lo bales: “OTW bro!”. Padahal baru bangun tidur, masi kriyep-kriyep sambil garuk-garuk biji.

Bit 2: Kalo Tuhan punya twitter, ada yang minta folbek ga ya? Kalo iya, mungkin Tuhan akan jawab: “OK, tapi kita kopdar dulu ya”. Trus Tuhan twit ke @Malaikat_Pencabut_Nyawa: “Bro tolong dijemput bro”. Trus malaikatnya bales: “OTW bro!”.

ketika kita sukses membuat penonton tertawa sepanjang set kita itu di sebut dengan nge Kill

dan ketika kita gagal bikin penonton tertawa alias garing itu di sebut dengan nge Bomb

Itulah beberapa teknik teknik dalam standup comedy yang saya ketahui. Sebenarnya masih banyak lagi teknik teknik yang lainnya. Ketika kita ingin menyusun sebuah materi usahakan menggunakan hasil pemikiran sendiri dan jangan menggunakan materi orang lain. Dan yang terpenting dalam menyusun sebuah materi untuk standup adalah hindari materi yang mengandung SARA. Karena bisa saja materi yang mengandung SARA menimbulkan masalah bagi di kemudian hari.

Dikutip dari : http://www.kompasiana.com/
 
 

 

How to Get Started in Stand up Comedy

"Making it" as a stand up comic is a goal desired by many, but enjoyed by few. However, with the right combination of determination, practice, and hustle, it's absolutely within the grasp of a talented amateur. The potential to be the next great stand up comic is yours - get on stage and start sharing your laughter with the world!

1. Keep a notebook with you at all times. Take notes as funny thoughts come to you or write down  strange occurrences that strike your funny bone. 

2. Buy some sort of book to learn how to write a joke (or read this article: Write a Good Joke). 

3. Understand your on-stage persona or attitude. Are you a deadpan comic? An angry comic? Brutally sarcastic and ironic? Goofy? Let your persona match your writing. 

4. Try your hand at writing jokes. Most good jokes come from the intersection of two seemingly unrelated ideas, or from a formerly unexplored observation about something most people overlook on a daily basis. 

5. Write a small routine and perform your "set" in front of a mirror. Note the things about the delivery of your jokes that you like, and also the things you don't. You can also try video-taping yourself.. Note verbal ticks like "Um," and "Uh..." and minimize, unless your persona is awkward and nervous. 

6. Work on your confidence and make memorized material seem spontaneous. If you use a different voice when you're reciting memorized speech try to transform it into something more conversational. 

7. Write more jokes. The more you write, the easier they come. Some days you'll have five or six jokes to record, and some days you'll have none. You should, however, be starting to create quite a backlog of material. 

8. Re-write your jokes. Rarely are perfect jokes written at 2AM. Make sure your jokes will be understood by the audience, and re-write if needed.

9. Find an "Open Mic" venue nearby and sign up. If you can call ahead of time and secure yourself a spot, you will be unable to back out. 

10. Finalize your set. Run through it a few times; it should be anywhere from five to ten minutes long. For your first set don't worry so much about time. Five minutes is plenty, and when the microphone is in your hand, time slips away faster than normal.

• Leave about thirty to forty-five seconds total of "laugh time"-time when the audience is laughing at your jokes.

11. Organize a "social safety net." Call friends you know will be supportive, and have them come to watch. This way, even if you bomb, you'll have people to laugh at your jokes.

12. Stand up. Leave the microphone in the stand if you'd like, or take it out. It's recommended you take it out if it's your first time; the feeling of a microphone in your hand and the freedom to move around while you speak puts you in quite a bit of control.

• Take your time, making sure not to mumble or speed through your delivery. Enunciate. Speak loudly enough that even those in the back can hear. Maintain eye contact with the crowd. Smile, but don't laugh at your own jokes. Be prepared for shout-outs and heckles.

13. Know when you're done. Either you've reached the end of your set or you've just gotten a large applause for a joke you know you can't top - now's the time to thank the audience for their attention and for the time they've taken to get to know your comedic styling. A simple "You guys have been great, thank you," should be more than sufficient.

14. Stay for the other acts. You've done your thing, and now it's only polite to watch some of the other regulars. More importantly, there's a chance another stand up comic will...well, stand up. You'll either know you were better than him (or her), or you'll be able to learn something from him (or her).

Rebel Comedy: Stand-Up In Saudi Arabia 

We, as Americans, get pretty jaded about stand-up comedy. After all, you see one too many unfunny hacks at places like The Chuckle Hut in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and it’s hard to remember how important it is as an art. Comedian’s like Lewis Black, George Carlin, and Andy Kaufman were no less artists than any author or painter.

Well, a BBC News report shows how important comedy really is in Saudi Arabia, a country with severe restrictions on free speech.  Simple things like cursing, sex jokes, and even women doing comedy are not legal, but that doesn’t stop Saudi comedians. They risk their freedom (and possibly life) performing in secret shows in more remote places away from the mutaween (Saudi religious police).
So while we might take stand-up for granted, with all of it’s two-drink-minimums and schlocky jokes, it is important to remember the impact a laugh can make.

What kind of places did you perform at? Does Saudi Arabia have comedy clubs?

 

No, that first show of mine could have been busted at any second. They have this group of people called the Haya. They all have long beards, and they are really ignorant. Whenever people throw parties or whenever guys and girls are hanging out together and these guys come in, it’s all over. They grab you, they take you to jail, they call your parents, and they mess everything up. At any second these people could have rushed in and stopped our shows. So we chose really remote areas away from the cities to do our shows, and then we realized we could do shows in places like the Italian Club, which is actually part of the Italian consulate.
Over time, [the authorities] started to accept stand-up comedy. They started to realize that people need something to do on the weekends. People aren’t making fun of the government necessarily, and they are not going to change the system. The government is afraid of people becoming too advanced and coming together; they don’t want them to be too Westernized. But now stand-up comedy is coming to be sponsored by big national companies. It’s become legit.
I imagine they are still not allowed to criticize the government or the royal family.
No, but the thing is, whenever a business is successful, the royal family wants in on it. They say, “We’ll give you some money and take this business from you.” That’s kind of what happened with comedy. The first production company was called Smile Productions, run by a British guy named Peter Howarth-Lees. And then the prince came into it and started a company called Luxury Events and just took over. It’s always like that.

A promo for Luxury Events.
What kind of crowds showed up to these performances?
At first it was a lot of expats. But then more and more it’d be locals, Saudis, guys and girls. And there would even be some religious people. I remember doing a show where one of the comedians, a Saudi friend of mine who calls himself “the Cool Terrorist,” was doing some jokes and really pushing it in terms of profanity, you know? There was one guy in the front row who looked to be very religious with the beard and everything, and his wife was completely ninja’d out with just her eyes showing. After his performance, my friend felt so guilty, he actually went up to this religious man and said, “I apologize for my use of language. I hope I didn’t offend you.” And the guy was like, “Look I have a long beard but I really enjoyed it. I thought it was awesome and I wish you the best.”
So how did you come to leave Saudi Arabia? One thing I don’t understand is that you were born there, but never had citizenship.
It doesn’t matter if you’re born in Saudi Arabia, it doesn’t matter how long you live there, it doesn’t matter if you work there, or if you go to school there. You’re still considered an expat. I have friends who are American and live in Saudi Arabia, who are married to Saudi women and have children with them, but they still don’t have residency permits, which are called Iqamas. If you don’t have an Iqama or a job that sponsors you in the country, you just gotta get the hell out. It’s crazy.
I was sponsored by my job at an English-language teaching institute, which was fine, and then they started to pay us really late. So I quit and n found a job at a university. And when you change jobs you need to go to your previous company to transfer your Iqama—but when I tried to do that they said that I ran away, so I couldn’t get any of the money that they owed me or a new permit or anything. They just completely screwed me over. And this is actually quite common, especially among the people from India or Pakistan or Bangladesh; the guys who do the manual labor. They all get screwed over this way. Once this happens to you, you have no rights. If you have money in your bank account, you can’t access it. I couldn’t even sell my car that was in my name.
There were lots of things going on in my life at the time. I had fallen in love with a Saudi girl and had been with her for two years, then she told me that once she graduated college her dad was going to force her to marry someone.
So I was in this phase where I really didn’t care about anything. I was illegal, I couldn’t marry my girl, and she was going to marry someone else very soon—and on top of that, I got kicked out of my apartment building because this guy who was staying on my couch called my neighbor’s wife a bitch.

Stand-Up Comic in Saudi Arabia

Breaking into stand-up comedy is notoriously hard in Western countries where there’s an infrastructure of clubs and agents and laws that allow performers to say pretty much whatever they want. But in Saudi Arabia, where the notoriously oppressive government still uses beheading as a punishment and women aren’t allowed to drive, among other things, it’s nearly impossible to be a comedian. The country’s stand-up scene is “burgeoning,” to be kind, or “pretty much nonexistent,” if you want to be mean.
So when Ahmed Ahmed, the Egyptian-American comedian, was performing in Saudi Arabia in 2008 and the bookers wanted to find some locals to open for him, they had to hold auditions to find ordinary people who were funny enough to get onstage and tell jokes. An English teacher named Omar Ramzi got a Facebook message that said auditions were being held, tried out, and soon found himself in front of a thousand people doing stand-up for the very first time.
Omar stuck with comedy, and four years after his debut he had become famous enough to acquire a nickname (“the White Sudani”), made good money doing underground comedy gigs, and was featured on national TV and in the Saudi Gazette, an English-language daily newspaper. The catch was that despite being born and raised in Saudi Arabia, Omar had never received Saudi citizenship and was living illegally in the country thanks to a string of mishaps. After navigating the not-funny joke that is the Saudi bureaucracy, he eventually managed to flee to Cairo. I reached out to him through Skype to talk about the turns his life has taken.
VICE: So your nickname is "the White Sudani”? How did that happen?
Omar Ramzi: Yeah. See, my mother’s Irish and my dad is Sudanese, and obviously most Sudanese people are dark-skinned, with African origins, but there is a small minority of white Sudanese that came from North Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, and places like that. My dad is from that small minority. We’re like the bluefin tuna of the human race—almost extinct.
What was it like growing up as part of that tiny minority?
So, I was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, but I lived a very different life than most people—I lived in a compound, which is like a gated community. There’s several of them all over the country. The one that I lived in was called Saudia City, which is for the employees of Saudi Airlines. They had everything: They had their own schools—American schools, British schools—medical centers, pools... It was like a little city where the rules of the country did not apply. Women could drive and wear whatever they wanted to. There were parties and alcohol. And just outside the gate, you would see women all covered up with the black [burqa], like all ninja’d out, you know? They were like completely different worlds.
When you started doing stand-up, you were doing it in that wider world of Saudi Arabia. What was that like? It must be a lot different from what I think of as stand-up in America.
The thing is, in the West, heckling is part of the norm in stand-up comedy. In this part of the world they don’t know about heckling. There’s no such thing. People sit down and they will respect you, even if you suck ass.

That must be nice.
Yeah, but it’s a bit of a challenge because they had a lot of rules. You can’t use profanity. You can’t talk about the government. You can’t talk about the royal family. You can’t talk about religion. So what is left to talk about? What is left to make fun of? I ended up making fun of the students I was teaching English to. I’ll tell you one of my jokes. I was teaching them the difference between “to” and “too.” After like three weeks of going through it, I thought, They must finally understand. So I asked who could give me an example of the difference between the words.