Vir Das is a storyteller, though not always a truthful one. So when he recounts the time he was rudely introduced to French kissing at a pond with Nineties pop music playing in the background, you may experience scepticism and mild disgust even as you howl with laughter. But before he had the Kochi audience in splits at the first show of his brand new Unbelievablish tour, Vir sat down for a chat with The Hindu MetroPlus .
Excerpts from the interview:
How did you get into stand-up comedy?
I was studying acting in the United States and was focusing on serious method stuff, where you sit in a circle and cry at each other. At the end of the course, we had to submit a serious work and I ended up writing a comedy piece instead. It was called Brown Men Can’t Hump , and was about five minutes of material and 55 minutes of cussing, so it didn’t do that well (laughs). But then I started doing two to three minute pieces at amateur nights, then came back to India and booked out the Habitat Center in Delhi for a show called Not For Members Only , because I was afraid only members would turn up and not the cool, young kids. But people did turn up and things went from there.
You were among the first stand-up comics in India and it has developed as an art form since. What are your thoughts on the comedy scene in India now?
I’ve been doing this for a little over ten years, and stand-up is no longer a novelty art form but an accepted art form. People understand it, know that it is different from theatre, and are willing to pay for it. This psychology has happened, even in smaller towns, and people are like chalo, lets go.
As someone who has performed both in India and abroad, do you find you have to apply more filters here?
Well, it depends more on the room than the region. Sometimes the room is older, sometimes younger. As a stand-up comedian, you have to adapt to that. What are they laughing at? Do more of that. What are they not laughing at? Do less of that. It’s more about listening to the audience than talking. The ticket pricing is also a factor. When you have tickets accessible to students and working professionals, you get a varied audience. And the more varied the audience, the fewer filters you have to apply.
With societal issues being tackled in comedy sketches, do you ever feel the need to address issues and be a mouthpiece for public sentiment?
Not really, mostly because I am solo stand-up artist and not part of a collective. So I depend only on my own moral compass when it comes to the material I write and what I put out there.
How much effort went into the Unbelievablish tour and what can we expect?
Unbelievablish took me about eight months to write. It’s a personal show with stories from my life and journey. It covers meeting a person, meeting the wrong person, first kiss, falling in love, getting married and so on. It is for the audience to decide what is true and what isn’t.
Being a public figure, was it hard to pick out things your audience might now already know?
Well, I’m going to talk about when Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and I chatted about lesbians, how I cancelled a wedding 72 hours before it happened, the time I was arrested in the U.S. for stealing paracetamol and assaulting a security guard…. Everything starts from a personal anecdote and goes into stand-up comedy. So I’m not making it easy for you guys.
How are things going with your movie career?
I have four releases this year. Mastizaade with Sunny Leone and Tusshar (Kapoor), which is an American Pie- type adult comedy. Then there is 1984 , a drama about a man and his family set during the 1984 riots, in which Soha (Ali Khan) plays my wife. I also have Khanna Patel , where I’m stuck between two khadoos characters, played by Rishi Kapoor and Paresh Rawal and Santa Banta , in which Boman Irani and I play Santa and Banta. So it’s a good mix.
The stand-up scene is taking off even in smaller cities now. Do you have any advice for beginners?
All I can say is any stage is a good stage. So if you’re going to get up on a crate in a tea shop, do that. That’s why I’m taking Unbelievablish to cities like Surat and Vadodara, places where stand-up has never been before, to discover it myself. This show has adult humour and dark moments and sexual content. So your guess is as good as mine on how it will be received.
The tour reaches Delhi today, and performances will be held at Jaipur, Coimbatore, Surat, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and Hyderabad before winding up in Goa on May 29.
