Kavin Jay wants to get personal… but not too serious

JOKINGLY referred to as Netflix’s own Kavin Jay, given the spotlight he gained from the success of Everybody Calm Down! since it premiered on the streaming service in 2018, the veteran comedian (he’s been at it for 16 years) wants to do more than just tell jokes.

In his newest show, I am Sorry I Shouted! (A reference to his often comical outbursts), which he performed last weekend at the PJ Performing Arts Centre at 1 Utama, there were jokes on some pretty serious subject matter. Infertility, mental health, adoption are among some of what was touched upon.

To be clear, while those jokes leave an impression and mark a sign of maturity, there is still plenty of side-splitting ribald humour about stuff like downloading porn in the days of dial-up Internet, family expectations and growing up Indian in Malaysia – with plenty of asides on race, religion and the rapidly shifting political scene.

Before the show, Kavin had a chat with The Vibes about his experiences during the pandemic, the genesis of his current act, his process as a comedian, as well as his plans for the future.

The Vibes: It’s been about four years since the Netflix special, what has changed about your act since then? How have you grown?

Kavin Jay: The thing is over the years I think I have grown to be a little bit more… there’s a little bit more substance to what I say now rather than just doing jokes for the hell of the jokes. I think that started out even before Netflix and then the growth started happening from there.

It’s not one of those shows where you get a compendium of jokes. There’s a story to this, there’s a reason why I’m telling you this story.

You could say that in a way, that overarching story, that’s what I want to bring out and also talk about the more personal things in life. For instance, in this show, I will be talking a little bit about infertility, mental health and stuff like that.

So yeah, I guess that’s one step forward.

TV: What’s your process when it comes to finding humour in serious issues or darker subjects?

KJ: Oh, that's the easy part. The way I look at it is, your response or laughter is two-fold. One is it takes you by surprise, or two, it hits a very personal or relatable spot within yourself.

I think these two are the triggers to laughter and I believe that talking about things that I have gone through and a bit more deeper stuff like that, I’m very sure that it relates to people on a human level and I think they can find the humour in that because of what I’m trying to portray.

I’m more of an emotional comic, where I prefer to talk more by emotion and bring out that emotion in the show itself. And when people see that emotion I think they react to that more than the joke itself in a way, because it’s so absurd that I’m reacting like that to something so trivial.

I mean, it's looking for the funny, the humour in something more serious.

I just realised that a lot of people have the same experiences, it’s just that it’s usually swept under the carpet. I just bring it out from under the carpet and talk to people about it.

TV: Do you think audiences have evolved to want more serious material, or how have audiences in general changed over time?

KJ: The audience in Malaysia has definitely evolved together with the comedian and when I was starting out there were the easy jokes that go with it, like the usual (Singapore vs Malaysia, racial humour).

I have realised my audience is looking for more than just that Singapore-Malaysia thing, that Indian-Chinese-Malay thing, and they also feel like there’s more depth to what we’re talking about. There’s more depth to going to a show, not just the sense that it’s hilarious, but at the end of the day you get to learn something, you get to talk, you get to listen to a different perspective rather than just a boring little comedy show.

TV: As people have become more vocal on social media, there are more people who are more open about their cultural sensitivities. How do you navigate that minefield of being sharp but not poking too hard?

KJ: I think that we all have our inner morality that we want to talk about or not. I’ve not been offensive to any parties as of yet, the thing is, whenever I do a show or write my material, I always think to myself, how would I feel about this material if I was on that side, the people I’m talking about, and I guess what I do is I do stories about myself rather than other people.

If I want to talk about struggles, or other people like the trans community, or let's say, you know, stuff like that, I feel like I'm not qualified to talk about it because I'm not in that community. I'm an ally obviously, but at the end of the day, they have more power to bring up what their grievances are and stuff like that.

So what I can do is I can talk about my experiences and what I do, so in a sense, I cannot offend anybody because that is my experience.

This is what I went through, I’m not making fun of anybody else other than me, I’m not making fun of anybody else other than my family, the people who are close to me and who are directly involved with me.

TV: The pandemic has obviously been a big blow to live performances, are things bouncing back now? Will the live experience be different now?

KJ: Yes and no. The short answer is yes, obviously, the longer answer is yes, but with a caveat of the fact that people are still scared, I think people are still very guarded in the sense that it's still very difficult to just go back to normal.

I mean, people are hungry for entertainment, yes. But people are so scared because the cases are rising now, though it is an endemic.

When people look at the numbers at 20,000 cases per day, it's still very scary for some people because they don't quite understand what is going on. And also, because they have kids at home, they have elderly parents at home, so they don't want to put them in danger as well.

So, yes, it’s great to be outdoors and be able to do shows again, but the number of people coming out is still lower than usual so at the end of the day, yes, but with a caveat.

TV: What’s the current situation with international touring, is it a possibility now or in the near future?

KJ: No, it’s not. Yes, there are some places, like I can go to America without quarantine and stuff like that. I can go to the UK as well I think, but the only problem is coming back to Malaysia, that's where the quarantine happens.

I don’t know if I am ready for travel yet. I don’t know if I want to be, you know, that person who travels and comes back with the virus and have to be quarantined for so many days and stuff like that.

I believe I will make that step (travelling). I was very much the touring comedian. I was always the guy who travelled around the world doing stand up comedy shows in China and America and the UK.

But right now I’m pretty much focused on Malaysia. It’s kind of just opening up as well, before I can move out to even Singapore or Indonesia where eventually it will happen. But I want to make sure that it's 100% safe before I do anything like that.

TV: What does the future hold after working on the new special, what's the plan going forward?

KJ: I wrote two movies and two series. I’ve written those and we are, we have developed it up to a point. We’ve spoken to production companies and we’re working on it, we’re working on an outlet to put this series on.

I’m looking more on that side of the industry as well, that’s something I’m really interested in because, over the pandemic, you know before the pandemic it was like, ‘I want to do, but I got no time’, well during the pandemic I had time.

I think out of the four I wrote, one was comedy, the others were more drama and thriller and stuff. This is something I really want to do and really want to pursue and I think it’s going in the right direction.

TV: Do you plan to act in them? It’s a typical trajectory in the US for comedians to become famous then have shows based on them.

KJ: No. I might have a small role in them, just to put my face there, but other than that, if I want to tell a story I want to get proper actors to do a proper job, rather than just writing for the sake of me getting roles.

Everybody Loves Raymond and Everybody Hates Chris, that’s not the kind of stories I want to tell because my childhood is pretty much very boring, so nobody wants to hear about it, it’s more about the situations we face uniquely as Malaysians, like the red tape of government, a bit of racism here and there.

So those kinds of things, those are the stories I want to tell in a broader sense of the widescreen. – The Vibes, February 21, 2022