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Vir Das: The biggest misconception about humour is that it is not universal
The actor-comedian, who is on a world tour, feels people are the same world over and though he adds local humour, audiences from other cultures understand his jokes as well.
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With many comedy specials to his name, Vir Das is a known name in the Indian as well as international comedy space. The actor-comedian says, “One of the biggest misconceptions about humour is that it’s not universal.” Currently on his world tour, Das adds, “Funny is funny. When I go to America, the audiences comprises 50% of Norwegians. When I perform in Norway, 50% of them (the attendees) are British. The audience is always diverse. But, if you second-guess yourself [to try and figure out] what they are going to like and reverse engineer your jokes, you’d go insane.”
The 44-year-old’s comedy shows are geared towards the Indian diaspora. However, that doesn’t stop people from other cultures from attending his shows or attempting to understand his jokes. “Whenever I perform in other countries, they have their local humour, too. But, the audience comes to your show to be surprised and wants you to take them across the world. It’s important to be authentically yourself and to consistently do your own thing. I do have to take an extra 30 seconds to explain [the joke to them and give them the cultural context], and they catch on. I don’t shy away from doing that extra work,” says The Bubble (2022) actor, who will next be seen in Call Me Bae.
He says that he had specific venues across the world on his wish list, and to his luck, he managed to get most of them. He shares, “There has been an uptick in the difference of opinion we got in our last set of shows, and in the 24-25 countries I have performed in, I was consistent surprised how after the pandemic people have been coming. One and a half years ago therefore I dreamt of some venues, like Kennedy Centre. I sent a list of those to my team, and it took us this one and a half years to reach here. We closed 11 out of the total 15!”
