Carlos Ottery: A Stand-up Kind of Guy
Carlos Ottery is the main man behind Comedy Club China, who are on a mission to bring English-language laughs to Beijing crowds starved of regular stand-up comedy. We asked Carlos about using the capital as inspiration and the “difficult” Beijing crowd.
On Beijing
“If Beijing was a style of comedy, I think it would probably be some surrealist, stream of consciousness, observational stuff, but twisted with a lot of slapstick, all delivered by a military general smashed on baijiu. That’s what it looks like in my mind anyway
“Here’s a joke about Beijing. Why are Beijingers all voyeuristic perverts? Because they love Peking”
On the local comedy scene
“Local Chinese comedy is thriving, of course, but until recently there hasn’t been much for the foreign community. I think this is because the expat milieu in Beijing is in its infancy. In Singapore and Hong Kong there’s a lot more comedy, largely because there have been a lot more foreigners for a much longer period of time. I think over the next five years, stand-up comedy will become a lot more established in Beijing”
On developing routines
“You don’t necessarily see it, but most comedians perform the same routine dozens, perhaps hundreds of times, to a variety of audiences before a set is perfected. A few of our stand-ups did some jokes at our last show, that they had tried only once before at an open mic and they got criticized afterwards because they had reused “old” material. So the guys have to constantly come up with new and untested material. They’re perfectly capable of this, but it makes honing routines tricky”
On Beijing as comedic inspiration
“We try to avoid squat toilets, pollution and queuing. It’s not that these can’t be funny, but it is a bit lame. Seriously, doing a killer routine about Beijing air quality? Not very imaginative …
“The stereotype of the booze-sodden expat, with three or four 18-year-old girlfriends, who works as an English teacher but tells everyone he is a DJ, is an endless motif to be joked about. Which reminds me, are we still going to do that ‘Me and My Vinyl Collection’ profile of me next month?”
On Beijing audiences
“The Beijing crowds have been tough I guess, and for two main reasons. Firstly, the foreign crowds here seem like pretty committed boozers, so a lot of the time they seem to just come along to get drunk and view the comedy as background fun rather than the main event. It’s not the end of the world, but some of the stand-ups feel they are not getting the attention they deserve. Secondly, the crowd is so international that it’s difficult to make everyone in the room happy at any given time. It would appear that your average Icelander has a different sense of humor to, say, your average Moroccan
“The Germans are the most difficult crowds. I know it’s a stereotype, but it’s very hard to get a laugh out of them. I was handing out flyers for our last event and I tried to give a couple to these two lads and they just said, ‘No, we are Germans.’ This possibly proves they have a pretty good sense of humor after all
“Some wag didn’t like one of our comedians. So she went on to our website’s forum and said he should be shot. Three others then commented in complete agreement. I stand by our comedians, but I did find this amusing”
Have a laugh with Carlos at Temple on May 8. For more about Comedy Club China, see www.comedyclubchina.com.
Click here to see the May issue of the Beijinger in full.
Photo courtesy of Comedy Club China
