Business

Saturday September 26, 2009

Up close and personal with Allan Perera and Indi Nadarajah

By ERROL OH


BE warned, corporate Malaysia. The Comedy Court duo of Allan Perera and Indi Nadarajah may next turn their sights on you. If that happens, you will learn that laughter is not only the best medicine, but can also be the most uncomfortable of afflictions when you are the target.

Over its 12 years of doing “social and political satire, Malaysian style” – that’s Perera’s description – Comedy Court has built a reputation for rapier wit, dead-on characterisation and a readiness to take on just about any topic, no matter how thorny.

Thus, if Perera and Indi decide that they want to poke fun at how Malaysian companies are run, businessmen and executives better be prepared for an awkward mix of amusement and embarrassment as they recognise themselves being portrayed on stage and in unflattering light.

It would be great to have the crooked boss or the clueless independent director joining the gallery of classic Comedy Court characters. They would fit in well alongside the likes of barfly lawyers Loga & Singam, menopausal housewives Myrtle & Thavi, spa regulars KC and TC, and YBs with datukships, Mat and Din.

Indi Nadarajah (left) and Allan Perera.

Perera sees the corporate sector as a rich source of material. “It’s a jungle out there. Survival of the fittest. The rat race. There are so many things. It’s a very vibrant and explosive world,” he says.

He instantly launches into idea-generating mode: “We can play different companies – the CEO with the CFO, the secretaries … My God! They basically govern the companies. You can’t have access to the bosses unless you tell their secretaries what you want.

“We can look at relationships between the secretary and the different divisions and sub-managers. So, yes, there are so many stories to write. Maybe one day we should write such a story.”

Meanwhile, the executive suite occupants can relax. For now, recent developments in politics and the community already offer Comedy Court plenty of fodder. Says Perera, “It’s getting more ridiculous as it goes on. More material and more material and more material. There’s an overload of material now.”

Clearly, the outcome of the March 8 general election last year has opened the floodgates of humour. The Pakatan Rakyat’s significant headway has made things a lot more interesting for commentators on what goes on in Malaysia.

“Now, of course, there’s the build-up to the next election. There’s so much happening,” Perera points out.

“It’s all going a bit topsy-turvy as well, with the Opposition not being able to agree on anything,” adds Indi.

Being 1Kind

There is a quick way to find out how Perera and Indi have fared when given this plethora of material. Arguably another consequence of the last general election, the 1Malaysia concept gets the Comedy Court treatment through The 1Kind Show, whose two-week run Kuala Lumpur began on Thursday.

Indi says a key theme is “this whole polarisation thing”. He illustrates by relating his encounter with an unhelpful group of Malay schoolboys in Klang. When he asked for directions to a school, their response was to suggest that he instead approached some Indian youngsters nearby.

“So what is 1Malaysia?” he asks.

It is the sort of question that pops up in our heads all the time. This is why Comedy Court has been successful for so long. Its shows, says Perera, are for the Malaysian eye and come from a Malaysian eye, and are performed with a Malaysian voice. “It’s how we see them – our country, our family, our friends and the world,” he adds.

“It’s a mirror to ourselves,” Indi sums up. Yet, he maintains that Comedy Court is apolitical.

To achieve that, the duo need to erect a wall between their individual views and their writing. They are serious about fulfilling their role as political and social satirists who use comedy as a platform.

“When we stand on stage as Comedy Court, the writing and what we present is all Comedy Court,” Perera explains. “Our personal politics have got nothing to do with Comedy Court.

“How I politically see this country, and how Indi does, are separate issues. We’re not members of any party. We belong to the greatest party, which is Malaysia. When we write for Comedy Court, we don’t come with preconceived ideas to support this or that.”

That does not make the writing any easier, of course. “Comedy is a very tough thing, you know,” says Indi. “At times, you come up with the idea but you can’t finish the story.”

Each show starts with Perera creating the outline. “I prepare the skeleton. He (Indi) brings me his ideas and we work on putting the meat on it.”

Indi supplies more details: “Sometimes, he will sit down and write the skeleton, and I’ll look at it. Or sometimes, he gets writer’s block, and he comes and tells me. Sometimes, a friend looks at us and says, ‘Guys, you’re stupid. Why don’t you put this in?’ And we’ll look at it and go, ‘Yeah, why don’t we put that in?’”

The seriousness of satire

Perera and Indi are happy if people are purely entertained by their shows, but Comedy Court does more than merely take the mickey out of politicians and other familiar figures.

Political satire, says Perera, is important because it fills the need for a vent, just like a car requires an exhaust pipe.

“People come and we say these things that are very sensitive. When they begin to laugh, there’s healing. At least somebody says it. And you feel a lot better that these two Indian jokers up there are saying it. That’s all. We do not change the world. Tomorrow, nobody’s going get fewer votes,” he points out.

“You just had a damn good laugh. Go back home, sit down and think about it. And you realise, ‘Those two actually slapped us.’”

Getting people to laugh at themselves can be tricky, more so when the subject matter is delicate.

Referring to the Aug 28 protest by residents of Section 23, Shah Alam, against the relocation of a Hindu temple to their neighbourhood, Perera says, “There’s a cow head being kicked around. We have to figure out how to make this funny and yet make it relevant and make you think about it.

“And we will do it. It is our job to do it. As social and political satirists, we are expected to do it.”

He adds that the effect must float across the room without causing offence. The hard part is to show the funny side of an issue without trivialising it and insulting others.

This means the writing must present perspectives that enable people to laugh at the stupidity or hypocrisy of the situations. The Comedy Court way is to show that in the end, we are all in the same boat, or rather, we are all butts of the same joke.

Here is how he sees it: “A person (in the audience) must be able to look at the person next to him, have a laugh and say, ‘Eh, they just had a go at you.’ And the second person must be able to turn around and say, ‘Hey, guess what? He had a go at you.’ And the two will look at each other and say, ‘They had a go at both of us.’ And the last part, ‘Guess what, they’re having a go at themselves.’”

Perera believes that comedy is a non-threatening medium to get people to look squarely at difficult issues. He argues, “The closest thing to the truth is when somebody laughs immediately. Because he has not paused to think. There’s no filter. Boom! He laughs!

“He doesn’t have time to think, ‘Okay, now, what’s the correct thing to do. Should I smile? Should I disagree? Should I stand up and walk away?’ That’s the beautiful thing about comedy. You know immediately what people are thinking. You just look at the audience. They laugh because it’s true.”

But first, the writing and the performance have to be funny. This demands nimble creativity and considerable talent. Which is why Perera and Indi have little hands-on involvement with the business and operational facets of Comedy Court.

The group’s management deals with marketing and administration, while the shows are put together by fulltime and part-time crew and producers.

Says Perera, “We concern ourselves with the creative part.” To this, Indi adds, “Allan takes a bigger role in the creative process. I take about 1%.”

That is just Indi refusing to take himself seriously, but the remark does reflect the easy-going collaboration between the two. It helps that they have much in common.

Says Indi, “We didn’t know each other when we were growing up, but culturally, we had the same background. Let’s face it -- we are two Sri Lankan boys in the multicultral society of Malaysia. Our stories are the same. Each of us can understand where the other was coming from.”

There is also a shared passion for music. Indi was at one time “hopping around, doing solo stints” as a singer, while Perera became a professional musician – he plays the keyboards – right after school. The latter was in bands such as Pieces, Asiabeat (“It was a very brief moment in the very, very early days,” says Perera) and Made In Malaysia.

Yet, few artistic team-ups work if the collaborators are too much alike. Their dissimilarities are obvious. Perera is often solemn and economical with his answers, but is likely to say a lot more when discussing the nuances and depth of his work.

Indi is cheerful and more of a natural performer, prone to making his point by acting out scenes, complete with accents and characters.

Comedy Court traces its roots to the time when both men were in the Instant Cafe Theatre (ICT). When they left ICT, they decided to do something together and they stuck to comedy.

Their first public show was in Hotel Istana in 1997. That marked the birth of Comedy Court. People who enjoyed the ICT shows turned up and soon Comedy Court developed its own fan base.

At the peak, about five years ago, there was a steady stream of corporate bookings and they were doing three public runs a year. “It has slowed down because people don’t spend that kind of money on entertainment any more. We still have our regulars who don’t miss out on us” says Perera.

He adds that the success has been surprising, and that there are both positive and negative aspects. “We get to write our own stories, which are recorded and are always there to refer to. So we wrote the history. As far as we’re concerned, it’s the last 12 years of Malaysia. Together, it’s our commentary on Malaysia.

“The negative part is that we found out that we couldn’t transcend this to television because of censorship.”

That is, until the Internet has grown into a media force. Comedy Court uploaded recordings of its performances on its website a few months before last year’s general election. The site received 12 million hits.

“From here, we found that the Internet will be the platform that we can use, as long as we’re living in this country, to export our brand of comedy,” says Perera.

His interest in the potential of the Internet has expanded to include another project, giggle.com.my. He describes it as website dedicated to comedy. “It’s a platform to get other people to do comedy. It’s an interactive place for anybody to send their comedy scripts, their comedy acting. It’s for people to get involved.”

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