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Being a Sri Lankan while living in the U.K. has shaped the comedic perspective of Vidura Bandara Rajapaksa.
“But only really because that is my situation,” he said.
His experience as an immigrant living in a Western country felt like he was under constant scrutiny and surveillance, to the point that it affected his personality and his stand-up.
Everything changed last September when he got a permanent resident card.
“I can feel myself slowly unclenching,” Rajapaksa said.
With his residency not being linked to a job, Rajapaksa felt like he could “f— up.” There’s no longer a weight on his shoulders. There was a sense of freedom that overtook some of his angry feelings.
“I still carry all of the grumpiness from being from the old country as well. I am still technically an immigrant, but I will not be under the same pressures that I have been prior,” Rajapaksa said. “I’m curious how that will affect [my new special].”
Rajapaksa will be working through that transition at Dynasty Typewriter on Friday and Saturday, where the audience can see him entering a new stage of his life.
His act has long captured his immigrant experience. Now, he’s going to be applying for British citizenship, a change that could alter his comedic perspective. What happens to a comedian’s work when he stops “chasing the dragon” of an immigrant struggle that caused him so much anger and pressure?
Before comedy, his rage would make its way past his calm and quiet qualities and express itself through his argumentative personality. That sort of emotional expression now has a place to live, Rajapaksa said.
If something makes him feel a certain way, rather than getting in an argument with someone, which is tiring, he goes home, talks to himself “like a weirdo” and creates a bit out of it. Comedy gives him permission, given that he holds up his end of the deal of being entertaining.
“It’s very cliché, but a very true thing, you get to make something out of all the stuff that either upsets you or pisses you off,” he added.
Most of the time, Rajapaksa said, his initial thoughts aren’t funny. Maybe one out of 20 ideas is conceived with a laugh in them. More often, he stubbornly works at it until it works onstage. Stand-up has an objectivity to it, but if he keeps trying something that doesn’t work, eventually he admits defeat and moves on from it.
His last self-released specials, “Monsoon Season,” “French Kiss Tunnel” and “Woodapple Jam,” dealt with immigration and life as an expatriate, the capitalistic corporate environment, spiritual and mental burnout while trying to stay human in a numbers-driven world. But now that the dragon has been captured, Rajapaksa doesn’t know what his new special will look like.
His bits come off as observations in the form of confrontation, while balancing an act of entertainment. His intentions are not to land a joke in between the lines of these structures. The end result is just a reflection of what he cares about, his morals and principles, while avoiding the unfunny thought of a comedian’s role in society, Rajapaksa said.
“It gives me far too much credit to think that I’m able to sort of pull something off like that, premeditated,” he added.
The result is an act that feels like an escape from reality, while being deeply aware of the systems Rajapaksa lives within. He’s not trying to make sense of his experience for the audience. His work is autobiographical and based on whatever has been bothering him that year.
“Two words that usually are not put next to each other automatically creates a little bit of a funny feeling, and then you can expand that concept outwards,” he said. “Where even, contradicting ideas held together at the same time is often just interesting, at the very least, and then you can sort of finesse interesting into funny, at a certain point.”
At the end of the day, Rajapaksa’s job is to entertain. His perspective on these dense subject matters comes through in the material. His jokes don’t help him process his experience — he processes it first, then turns it into material that others can interpret.
He doesn’t really want his audience to leave a show with any kind of particular thoughts of his immigrant experience, or his navigation of the corporate world. He just hopes they had a good time.
“The author’s intentions mean something, but everyone is free to interpret things their own way.”
“And if they think of more stuff, that’s nice,” he said. “I hope they understood my intentions.”
