Vijai Nathan in Ithaca

Arts feature:
profiling Indian-American comedienne and theatre performer Vijai Nathan
Ithaca Times
September 26, 2007
1,271 words

"Upstaging Tradition"

full text here

Upstaging Tradition
By: Mark Tedeschi
09/26/2007

"With stand-up, each person is pretty different," says Vijai Nathan. "The guys I've worked with? One is like an Indian 'gangsta,' so that's his act. Another one is gay - he grew up in India but lives in America, so he has a totally different point of view."

Nathan, 35, also has a unique point of view. An Indian-American comedienne - performing at the Kitchen Theatre this weekend - she has spent the last 10 years using stand-up comedy and theatre performance to share her distinctive perspective with audiences around the world.

Nathan's parents moved from India to the United States in the early 1970s. She was the first of her siblings born in America, and in school, found herself looked at by her classmates as different. "There were a couple of Korean kids, me... and that's it," she says.

The culture clash she experienced growing up was a struggle for Nathan until she gave it a new outlet: comedy. But her original career path was hardly headed in that direction. "I had a degree in English literature, and then a job in copy editing." For an English major just out of college, she explains, "It was either Starbucks or journalism."

"I did [journalism] for three years," she continues. It was a good job, and I was making good money. I just started realizing it wasn't the right fit for me."

Nathan looked into adult education classes wherein, she jokes, "In two sessions you can become a wine taster or a professional comedian."

Comedy, Nathan discovered, was exactly what she'd been looking for. Initially, her parents responded to the news of her new interest with some skepticism; they thought she must be unhappy with her life. Then they watched her perform. "They saw that people were laughing, and realized, 'She must be doing something right!'" After that, they encouraged her, "If you're going to do this, be the best you can at it."

In 1997, she quit the journalism job and toured around Maryland. After an unfortunate car accident totaled her only means of transportation from venue to venue, she was forced to move to Manhattan ("An accident brought me to New York - literally"). There, she took a job as a receptionist to earn money while she performed in the city's comedy circuit. The receptionist job kept her from performing as much as she would have liked, but that wasn't the worst part. "The worst part was having to ask permission to pee," she says. It didn't last too long - since 2003, Nathan has been able to make a living strictly from writing and performing.

When she discovered that her stand-up material was touching on themes deeper than simple on-the-surface comedy, Nathan expanded her act to include a one-woman theater piece titled, "Good Girls Don't, But Indian Girls Do." For her upcoming performance at the Kitchen, she'll start with some stand-up, follow with the "Good Girls Don't" show, and conclude with time for audience questions.

She says that "Good Girls Don't" has a different energy than stand-up, her first love. "The main point is to be funny, to use the aggressive energy of stand-up. With the solo show, I can be more vulnerable and write some of the back story that's behind the jokes. I can give the full picture, the full range of emotion."

That back story was even enough for her to try turning the show into a screenplay. "I started writing the first draft," she says. "I got through act one. The second was harder...and on the third act, I quit." The prospect of waiting for the pleasure of hearing a crowd's reaction frustrated her. "I love writing a performance for an audience. The hardest part about writing a film or novel is that you don't get to perform it - you have to wait for someone else to work on it."

Nathan covers a breadth of topics in her act: growing up amidst cultural misunderstandings, having two "very Indian" immigrant parents, living in two worlds at once. "And there are other things that happen to anyone in America," she adds. "Dating and relationships, TV... it's a coming-of-age story."

Since "Good Girls Don't" follows a script complete with music and lighting cues, there isn't as much room for improvisation as the stand-up routine sometimes calls for. Nathan has to be ready to adjust to a particular audience's reactions, but she's only had one real instance of "heckling" in her comedy career - but she admits the guilty party had good reason.

"All the things converged in the wrong way," she remembers. Her friend was performing at a show called "The Nasty Girls of Comedy" and ordered Nathan up to the stage. "I wasn't ready - I was still in my hideous receptionist clothes. My material was not 'Nasty Girl' material, so my friend said, 'Just change your stuff to be nasty.' I'd do things like tell a joke and add an extra curse... I was obviously uncomfortable."

Nathan, still relatively new to performance, prayed for the "red light" to come on, indicating she could leave the stage. "Back then, I didn't realize that you should just leave. I still have the audio tape - you want to keep things like that around. I think I labeled it 'The Day I Completely Bombed.'"

Nathan has also performed abroad in South Africa, England and several cities in Canada (a country she calls "The Other White Meat"). She ran into some unexpected cultural differences during her visit to South Africa; at one comedy festival, there were two stages - one standard theatrical venue, and one called "The Danger Zone."

"Comics booked to that [latter] room would usually get naked at some point in their act," she says. "Many Indians in South Africa are conservative, or some are Muslim. They saw a woman who looks Indian, speaking with an American accent, talking about sex and dating... after two days, I got switched to the Danger Zone. It was like an Indian woman talking about premarital sex was as offensive as a guy showing his balls."

Although she hasn't performed in India, she doesn't expect the reaction there would be any less harsh. "I think they'd kill me," she says in jest. "An Indian guy could talk about sex or politics, but with a woman it's another level of whether it's okay to laugh." She adds, "So much of [my act] is about language, and English is a second language for most there."

Nathan has visited India, though, and plans to return there soon to gather material for a new show - in fact, her performance in Ithaca is the last before she takes some down time to write more.

What's the new show about? "I think... it's going to be about God," she says. "Maybe. It's still kind of a big mess of mushy soup in my head." Religion was a dynamic element in her upbringing, rife with ponderable implications. "My mother is Hindu and also very superstitious. My Dad was agnostic or atheist, depending on his mood. And my oldest sister is a born-again Christian."

In the meantime, she may also produce more short, cheap video sketches like "Chai Noon" (easily found via a Google video search), which stars both of her parents. "It was fun! A kind of instant gratification," she says.

Her parents have always loved being a part of her act. "They feel famous!" she says proudly. "My father passed away in April of this year. People were so sad when they found out. He affected all these other people's lives just because they'd seen my show. It's nice - makes it seem like he's always around."

Nathan's website is www.vijaicomedy.com. For more information on the Kitchen Theatre's Counter Culture series, visit www.kitchentheatre.org/kcc. The Kitchen Theatre is located on 116 N. Cayuga St.