Live comedy flies well in Jakarta<\/p>\n
By Maria Kegel<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Telling a funny joke comes down to timing, and
\nthe same can be said for the inception of the Jakarta Comedy
\nClub, held monthly at the Mandarin Hotel ballroom.<\/p>\n
Television director and producer Ian Carless, one of the three
\norganizers and creators of the club, said for some reason the
\ntiming had never been right to launch a live comedy club in this
\npart of Asia.<\/p>\n
That is, not until he arrived in Jakarta last year.<\/p>\n
Its quick success has been no laughing matter: The Jakarta
\nComedy Club is in its fourth month and already the Bali Comedy
\nClub is up and running. The Kuala Lumpur Comedy Club also opens
\nthis week.<\/p>\n
Carless said the idea for the club was not an original one.<\/p>\n
A popular comedy venue has been operating in Hong Kong for a
\nnumber of years and Carless said he wanted to try a similar thing
\nwhen he was based in the Philippines, but it did not get off the
\nground until he met up with a friend at a bar here and suggested
\nthe idea.<\/p>\n
Carless's college friend in London, who knows many comedians,
\nwas then brought into the picture to book all the acts from the
\nUK. And the stage was set.<\/p>\n
\"When we did sit down and decide to do the comedy club, there
\nwas this shared consensus with a whole bunch of people sitting
\nround a table saying 'yeah, we could all do with a laugh'.
\nSomeone just said that as a quip, but it's true, though, to the
\nextent that we just tag it on as a bit of a byline for the comedy
\nclub.\"<\/p>\n
He stressed that they were a club and that there were no
\nticket sales, just monthly memberships priced at Rp 275,000 per
\nperson, which were always sold in advance. The maximum is 300
\nmemberships for each event.<\/p>\n
\"Last month we were having to throw in extra chairs and there
\nwas no table space, but I think this month will be a bit quieter
\nas a lot of people are on holiday.\"<\/p>\n
Each show falls around the third week of the month and this
\nFriday is the fourth meeting for the club.<\/p>\n
Leading English comedy magician Paul Zenon and Irish stand-up
\ncomedian Owen O'Neill, who have both appeared countless times on
\nTV and enjoyed critical acclaim at home in UK, will grace the
\nstage on July 20 with their superb wit.<\/p>\n
Carless said they pushed the comedy club aspect of it as they
\nhad realized with the amount of time that expatriates had been
\nout here, nobody knew the names of top performers anymore.<\/p>\n
\"What we try and get across with the fact that (it is a club)
\nis every month we'll have two comedians for you to come and watch
\nregardless of who the individuals actually are, just to get
\npeople used to the routine, the schedule and that's what we do
\nevery month,\" he said.<\/p>\n
Top comedians<\/p>\n
Only top performing comedians make it to the stage of the
\nJakarta Comedy Club and Carless said they stayed clear of
\nperformers who were rude or resorted to sexual connotations as it
\nwould not go well with the discerning audience here.<\/p>\n
\"However, in terms of comics having a go at the audience,
\nthat's fair game.\"<\/p>\n
The opposite has also held true in past performances, though,
\nand Carless stood corrected after he assured one of the first
\ncomedians to come over that Jakarta's audiences were nice, tame
\nand would not heckle.<\/p>\n
\"But the minute he got up on stage they all started to heckle
\nhim,\" he said.<\/p>\n
\"I think comedians in general don't like it. They may like
\nheckling if it's amusing and constructive but if they shout out
\nobscenities, it can be well, you've had one beer too many.\"<\/p>\n
Since comedians are professionals with many performances under
\ntheir belt, they have different ways of handling those situations
\nand all of them came prepared with putdowns for hecklers, he
\nsaid.<\/p>\n
\"The last guy, Ross Noble, who was a bit chubby, was a riot.
\nWhen he walked out on stage nobody said a word and then somebody
\nshouted, 'You fat bastard!' He just took it right in his stride
\nand said 'I may be fat, but there's a reason for that. And the
\nreason is every time I do your mother, she gives me a biscuit'.\"<\/p>\n
He basically told the heckler that he was not going to win as
\nhe had the microphone, Carless said.<\/p>\n
\"I think you have to be pretty brave or pretty drunk to go at
\na comedian onstage with a microphone.\"<\/p>\n
Carless said the majority of humor travels well over here and
\nwhen comedians visited they asked if there was anything they
\nshould not touch on.<\/p>\n
\"The only two things that we always tell them to steer clear
\nof is politics and religion, two sensitive issues given the area
\nwe are living in, but other than that, we pretty much leave them
\nto get on with it.\"<\/p>\n
The Jakarta audience is very international and Carless
\nestimated that expatriates make up 70 percent of the audience,
\nwith \"a third British, a third English and a third of everybody
\nelse, including Germans, Dutch, Swedes and Kiwis\".<\/p>\n
With such a mixed audience, Carless said comedians realize
\nthat it was in their best interest to make the humor as
\naccessible as possible by keeping it on an international level
\nand that none of the humor was parochial.<\/p>\n
\"None of the comedians want to get up there and fall dead on
\ntheir face, so they keep it fairly accessible,\" he said.<\/p>\n
Carless said visiting comedians were all shocked by the fact
\nthat people had servants and drivers and nobody walks anywhere.<\/p>\n
\"A lot of comedians have huge laughs with the culture shock
\nthing and being out here for the first time, with comments about
\nbeing followed by about 500 guitar players on the street, to
\npeople selling taps on the overpass:'Taps, why?'\"<\/p>\n
He noted that since so many expatriates had been away from
\ntheir respective homes for so long, if the humor was concentrated
\ntoo much on individual characters, places and things, there was
\nnot going to be a reference point for the audience.<\/p>\n
\"We keep it fairly generic, a lot of jokes and scenarios I
\nthink translate. There's a lot of routines where you can just
\nchange the names and change the place, but a lot of
\ncharacteristics stay the same.\"<\/p>\n
As for local talent, Carless said the language barrier posed a
\nchallenge. However, an open mike spot, where members of the
\naudience are given a chance to get up on stage and tell a few
\njokes was being considered.<\/p>\n
\"But we're probably more likely to do something about that if
\npeople come back to us and say they really want to do that rather
\nthan us trying to force it on the audience.\"<\/p>\n
So what does Ian Carless get out of organizing the monthly
\nmeetings for the club?<\/p>\n
\"My personal reward out of this is seeing 300 people laughing
\ntheir butts off.\"<\/p>\n
And let's face it folks, in these times couldn't we all do
\nwith a good laugh.<\/p>\n
Memberships for the Jakarta Comedy Club are available through
\nits website www.jakartacomedyclub.com, or by calling 0811-854045.<\/p>",
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