{"id":1118,"date":"2011-04-13T15:28:10","date_gmt":"2011-04-13T07:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/?p=1118"},"modified":"2022-11-18T16:21:29","modified_gmt":"2022-11-18T08:21:29","slug":"standup_comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/2011\/04\/standup_comedy\/","title":{"rendered":"Stand up for Laughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paying only\u00a0$150 to\u00a0enjoy a night full of jokes in Soho, Central<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reporter: Dorothy Goh<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tucked away between restaurants and bars in Elgin Street, Soho, there is a small basement club that only opens for business at night. About an hour before the club opens, people are already waiting at the entrance and hoping to get the best seats. They are not there for the drinks, the food, the music or even the conversation. They are there for laughs.
\nTo enter the club, you have to walk down a steep flight of stairs. At the bott<\/a>om is a cosy space where rows of chairs are neatly arranged, circling a simple stage with a microphone stand. This is where the magic happens.
\nThe TakeOut Comedy Club (TOC), which opened in February 2007, is the first full-time comedy club in Asia. The club was founded and is managed by Jameson (also known as \u201cJami\u201d) Gong, a 42-year-old Chinese American whose parents are from Hong Kong.
\n\"\"<\/a>Gong says he has loved telling jokes and making others laugh since he was young. \u201cIt is my destiny, my calling,\u201d he exclaims, looking upwards with arms opened wide. He grew up watching American comedian Johnny Carson on \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d and was amazed at how Carson could make him and millions of others laugh just by talking about everyday topics. The show inspired Gong to become a comedian.
\nAfter quitting a career in retail management to pursue his passion for comedy, Gong worked as a stand-up comedian based in New York. He came to Hong Kong in 2006 with a mission to create a local comedy scene.
\nThe TakeOut Comedy Club showcases both English and Chinese stand-up comedy but the style is closer to American stand-up than the performances of homegrown artistes like Dayo Wong Tze-wah. Here, the comics share an intimate space with a small audience, rather than play to large theatres. The shows also feature more audience interaction, with each comedian having less than 10 minutes to perform on stage.
\nAccording to Gong, comedy clubs are popular because they help to relieve stress. \u201cLaughing helps improve blood circulation too,\u201d he says.
\nGong hopes to bring more laughter into Hong Kong people\u2019s lives and thinks the best way to do that is to introduce stand-up comedy to the locals. \u201cThe expatriates already know what stand-up comedy is. They know they have to laugh out loud,\u201d Gong explains. Before each Chinese show begins, Gong never fails to encourage the audience to laugh out loud instead of hiding their laughter. \u201cWe want Hong Kong people to realise the power of laughter.\u201d
\nNonetheless, he understands that in Chinese \u201cculture\u201d laughing in public is regarded as something to be embarrassed about. Pointing to a corner of the room, he says, \u201cWe had one show last week with a couple sitting over there. The girl was laughing so hard \u201chahahahaha\u201d but her boyfriend was like \u201cshhhhh\u201d (Gong puts his finger to his lips) during the show. We saw it. We want to get people to see that it\u2019s okay to laugh out loud.\u201d
\nAlthough Gong wants to get the locals laughing out loud on a regular basis, TOC only showcases Chinese stand-ups once a month. \u201cWe don\u2019t have big enough audiences or comedians to do that more than once a month, not yet,\u201d Gong explains.
\nLive comedy shows are still quite new in Hong Kong but Gong is confident about the outlook for the business. \u201cWe\u2019re hitting an untapped market and we have untapped materials that we can talk about on stage where you can relate with us. With a large market of seven million Chinese people, we hope to have Chinese shows every day. We hope to open up comedy clubs in Mongkok, Kowloon. Why not?\u201d
\nApart from his comedy shows, Gong gets invited to perform at schools and private events. \u201cNow companies hire us for special shows, their parties as well. So, from the business standpoint, you can make money by being funny,\u201d he says.
\nGong has a positive mindset, even when it comes to disappointments and failures. \u201cYou will fail, but you will fail to succeed,\u201d he says and strongly advises people to \u201cjust do it\u201d.
\nThis is exactly what Vivek Mahbubani did when he saw that TOC was organising a stand-up comedy competition three years ago.
\nMahbubani, a 29-year-old Hong Kong-born Indian, grew up here and speaks fluent English and Cantonese. He has admired stand-up comedians since he was a kid. \u201cI remember sometime during university, I was watching stand-up comedy and decided that one day before I die I\u2019m going to try it one time!\u201d He won TOC\u2019s first Chinese stand-up comedy competition in 2007, and was crowned the funniest Chinese comedian in\u00a0Hong Kong that year and the funniest English comedian the following year.
\nMahbubani is a website designer by day and a stand-up comedian at night. He even designed the homepage of the TakeOut Comedy website. Although he is squeezed for time between work and comedy, he is not willing to sacrifice either one.
\nComparing English and Chinese shows, Mahbubani thinks the mentality of the audiences are very different. \u201cA lot of the time in Chinese shows, people are like \u2018Alright, let\u2019s see how funny you really are.\u2019 People are very critical in Chinese,\u201d he says. However, after nearly three years of performing, Mahbubani realises that as long as the content is funny, it does not matter what language you perform in.
\nMahbubani says stand-up comedy is a hobby that he \u201cpursues professionally, but gets paid amateurly\u201d. He spends at least an hour on writing every day. He values originality and works hard on his personal style. \u201cIt should be certain that when you write or present something, they would know that that\u2019s his style. You can tell,\u201d he says.,
\nAs a Hong Kong Indian, Mahbubani jokes about his own ethnicity, but not to the extent that he is racist or intentionally hurts anybody. Instead of feeling bitter or angry in response to insults hurled by others, he channels them into his comedy.
\n\u201cPeople call me \u2018gweilo\u2019, and I was upset because c\u2019mon man, I\u2019m not a gweilo. I\u2019m an \u2018ah cha\u2019 which is the right term for my people. Do it correctly!\u201d Mahbubani says that if you want to be racist, be the right kind of racist.
\nHe is modest when asked how he feels about his growing fanbase, \u201cI\u2019m flattered,\u201d he says. \u201cI always joke that people are always telling me that \u2018one day you\u2019re going to be famous, the paparazzi are going to follow you\u2019 and I\u2019m like \u2018this is going to be pathetic!\u2019\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019ll never manage to get onto the front cover. It\u2019ll be like \u2018oh, he makes another website. Yay, it\u2019s green colour this time. Look at him, he\u2019s in the library, reading books, yay.\u2019\u201d
\nMahbubani says his on-stage persona is a \u201cvery exaggerated form\u201d of himself, offstage he enjoys private time alone. But every Thursday, he meets up with other, mostly local comedians at a cafe to try out new ideas and material. \u201cWe present it like we\u2019re presenting to an audience but because it\u2019s on a small table, intimate and everything, you get feedback immediately.\u201d
\n\"\"Like Gong and Mahbubani, Matina Leung is a comic who performs routines in both English and Chinese. However, unlike them, she has not considered a career as a stand-up comedian. \u201cIt\u2019s not a very popular form of performing art at this point in Hong Kong. We don\u2019t have that big a market to support it,\u201d she explains.
\nAlthough Leung went to college in the United States, she never entered a comedy club until she returned to Hong Kong and was drawn by an advertisement for a free stand-up comedy workshop organised by TOC.
\nHaving done stand-up for two years now, Leung has grown \u201cmore and more in love\u201d with the format. Still, sometimes she finds it difficult to win over the audience with her jokes because she is female. \u201cChinese people are more conservative, they think that girls should be quiet, elegant, more reserved, and not funny.\u201d
\nBeing a woman does give Leung certain advantages though. She talks about the woes of being an unmarried Hong Kong woman in her 30s, and of how she used to date \u201ccheap\u201d men. \u201cI can connect to female audiences better in general,\u201d she says.
\nDespite being the \u201cclown\u201d among her girl friends, Leung still gets very nervous when she is on stage. Through stand-up comedy, she has a better understanding of her shortcomings and has built up her self-confidence.
\nApart from her self-confidence and personal development, Leung has learnt to be professional and not let her emotions affect her performance. She remembers she once had an argument before a show. \u201cI could not stop thinking about the fight. I went up on the stage and did a horrible job. I told myself afterwards that I\u2019m never going to let that affect my performance again.\u201d
\nLeung sees it as her job to make people happy, to make people laugh. She recalls that when the hostage tragedy occurred in Manila last year, everyone was very sad. \u201cBut the show must go on. The audience may feel sad too, but they just want to take a break and laugh for an hour.\u201d
\nGong, Mahbubani and Leung are all optimistic about the future of stand-up comedy in Hong Kong. \u201cWe\u2019re creating a market from scratch. The possibilities are endless,\u201d says Gong. After all, making people laugh is the \u201ctoughest but greatest job in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hong Kong’s new breed of stand-up comics mine daily life for laughs as they try to tickle the city’s funny bone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1991,836],"tags":[90,33,89,52],"class_list":["post-1118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-120","category-lifestyle","tag-comedy","tag-culture","tag-entertainment","tag-ethnic-minorities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1118"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1475,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118\/revisions\/1475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}