ccBerchem, Nuff Said en Al Mawada sloegen de handen ineen om het Amerikaanse comedygezelschap ‘Allah Made Me Funny’ af te laten zakken naar het Antwerpse ccBerchem. De Texaan Mo Amer en de Indisch-Amerikaanse Azhar Usman komen er aanstaande zondag (19/05) grappen over "de absurde problemen van religie, terreur en politiek gemixt met persoonlijke verhalen over hun familie en zichzelf". De Schotse Kif Kif stagiaires Missale Solomon en Steven Clark spraken (in het Engels) met Azhur Usman:
“Allah made me funny”, a stand-up comedy show, has been touring around the world since 2008. Kif Kif as a media platform was given the opportunity to conduct a brief interview with Azhur Usman in order to get an insight into the meaning, hopes, beliefs and objectives behind the show. Consisting of three Muslim men, the show can be described as the collection of the lived experiences of the three, who try to highlight “how the illusions of the human ego can provide an extensive resource of great comedy material”.
Originally the brainchild of Preacher Mos, later joined by Azhur Usman in 2004 and in 2006 by Mo Amer, the show aims to “give people who are not privy into the Muslim community a window into the experiences and collected stories of a few artists from that community”. On the reverse side, the show aims to lead by example and present the culture of comedy from the Muslim perspective. It “provides an opportunity to building bridges, providing the audience the platform to get exposed to art forms, points of views and communities that they are not really privy to”. Azhur states that he views the show as reaching a cross roads where Islam meets other faith traditions; where brown, black and white people can mix together through a language of comedy, which is a universal human language of the heart.
When asked about any political message contained within the show, Azhur describes the crew as not seeking to be seen as a voice of a larger community, rather for him comedy is a very personal craft, he basically gets on stage and shares his personal beliefs. He states he is against identity politics, which label individuals as covered in racial wrappers. He hopes this personal belief finds its way into the show. The show portrays - in a philosophical way - the unwrapping of these layers by talking about these issues in an honest way, where people can begin to see that we are bigger than simply these labels or identity markers and that there are much bigger issues going on. Azhur states that there is a lot of tension in the world right now and he wonders how much of this is fabricated by the media and a fear of the unknown. He hopes that the show creates a chance for different people to come together and create social bridges through the universal medium of laughter. Many different people come to the show, Muslims and non-Muslims, and hopefully they can all share a laugh at good humour together. The show so far has been positively received by all kinds of different people. Laughter can transcend all social divisions through simply being a physical response.
The three-man show encapsulates the history of the Islam world in America by expressing the shared beliefs and understanding of the global type of consciousness that good stand-up comedy is all about, connecting it to the core human values and talking about issues that are universally relatable. However, Azhur also points out that the three men are not spokespersons for the Islam faith, but rather he wishes the team to be considered as three different perspectives amongst a faith that has 1 billion community members. “We are just artists who try to tell jokes and let the audience respond however they want (hopefully through laughter). As a members of the Islam community it would be quiet grandiose and arrogant to think that three comedians can represent such a large faith community”
“We as comedians try to speak about ourselves as three Muslims and share with the audience our lived experience in the hope that our voice can be triangulated with the other voices of the Islam world that the audience may have heard.” In its essence the show does no talk about Islam. Making fun of religion is not part of the content but rather the stupidity of the human ego, which provides an extensive resource of comedy material.
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Tickets en info via www.ccberchem.be
Deze Engels gesproken comedyshow is een samenwerking tussen cc Berchem, ‘Nuff Said en Al Mawada.
